Quotes about history

Roman history is constantly being written around, it has always been done; In a sense, we know more about our ancient Romans than they themselves knew. In other words, Roman history is a work in progress.

This is a dangerous myth if we think we are better historians than our predecessors.

If we are to heed the past to prepare for the future, we should listen to these voices of a generation that speaks to us of duty and honor, sacrifice and accomplishment. I hope more of their stories will be preserved and cherished as reminders of all that we owe them and all that we can learn from them.

Well, as I say, authority is always lawfully relinquished, but sometimes the legitimacy is acquired after the relinquishment.

“You mean retroactively?”

I mean that cause and effect are not always arranged in an ideal sequence.

“In other words,” Filidor translated, “not only do victors write the histories, but usurpers also rewrite the rule book to justify the illicit seizure of office.”

Perhaps not the most felicitous manner of putting it, but essentially correct.

“I am surprised the people put up with such shenanigans. They should rise up.”

Unwittingly, I am sure, you put your finger on the flaw in your own reasoning.

“How so?”

You said, “They should rise up,” not “We should rise up.” As long as it is a matter to be solved by others, it will not be.

It was all tied up in that same old question. How much did man strike outward to affect all his surroundings and how much did the surroundings press in upon him? Did the Napoleonic Age produce Napoleon or did he produce it?

Our histories are inevitably braided together with our futures.

History moves in a circle.

While history is what happened, it is also, just as important, how we think about what happened and what we unearth and choose to remember about what happened

At some point it is no longer a question of whether we can learn this history but whether we have the collective will to reckon with it.

“It has been the fate of many a man,” said Naakkve, “that those who were his fiercest opponents in life found success on the road he had pointed out to them—but only after they had made him into fodder for the worms. After his mouth was stuffed with earth, the lesser men no longer shrank from affirming the truth of his words.”

There cannot be new things in England. There can be old things freshly presented or new things that pretend to be old.

Beneath every history, another history.