Quotes About History

Sartre said that wars were acts and that, with literature, you could produce changes in history. Now, I don't think literature doesn't produce changes, but I think the social and political effect of literature is much less controllable than I thought.

If I could time-travel, I would either go to the '70s and watch the first 'Star Wars' film the day it opened, or to 1880s London, during the Jack the Ripper era, and experience the true grossness of that time.

Ever since wars have been fought, guys have been writing their stories.

I can't think of a single example of two mature democracies going to war with each other in the 20th century. It's where there was an absence of democracy and a breakdown of democracy that we finish up with these wars.

I still tell people, 'I'm pretty sure I'm the only 'Star Wars' fan in history to ever break into Skywalker Ranch by writing a movie about breaking into Skywalker Ranch.'

If there's Cold War, no 'Star Wars' in China.

I point out the Democratic party won two world wars and beat the depression, cut out the poverty by two thirds, and was responsible for the same sustained prosperity that we've had in the United States. What the hell do we have to apologize for?

In my humble opinion, propaganda is one of the most evil tools humans have used against humans throughout history to justify wars, justify atrocities, justify evil. ISIS has taken it to a new extreme.

I do love history. I loved learning about wars and things in school.

Europeans are far more anti-war than Americans. They've had more wars, and they really just don't believe in it any more. But Americans do.

Just by my home is an entrance to the sewers they used in the Warsaw uprising. I grew up knowing people died down there. Warsaw was once a battleground; then it became a morgue. It's a city littered with ghosts. And that never left me.

My original interest in the Nazi holocaust was personal. Both my father and mother were survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto and the Nazi concentration camps. Apart from my parents, every family member on both sides was exterminated by the Nazis.

In essence, the tragedy of the Warsaw Rising resulted from a systemic breakdown of the Grand Alliance.

Both my father and mother were survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto and the Nazi concentration camps. Apart from my parents, every family member on both sides was exterminated by the Nazis.

If the Jews had issues with the Polish people then why during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, did the Jewish underground hang two flags from the bunker - the Polish flag and the flag of the Jewish people? Why? They did it because they felt part of Polish society and that is how we view them as well.

The last thing I wanted to do was to be a wartime President.

I'm interested in wartime stories, as I think it's important to remember what the soldiers went through.

After 1945, shamefully, we Brits seemed dedicated to punishing the heroic Poles at every turn for their wartime loyalty.

Every vice was once a virtue, and may become respectable again, just as hatred becomes respectable in wartime.

You can't portray wartime Shanghai without writing about the Holocaust - about 25,000 Jews survived the Nazi death machine by taking refuge there.

Sales of corsets doubled between 1948 and 1958, possibly as part of the process of putting women back into the box, as they gave up the jobs and freedoms that came during wartime.

That's what I love about history - nuance. I don't believe in unalloyed heroes. Everyone's got warts, and everyone's got a surprise side.

We should be wary of politicians who profess to follow history while only noticing those signposts of history that point in the direction which they themselves already favour.

Depression runs in my family on both sides, and I have to be wary.