Quotes About History

And in all this chaos well ordered in sevens, John was not seeing, let alone presetting, the future. He is reading a pattern in his present: a pattern with the many-headed systemic force to shape history as we know it. Even now.

Widespread cultural suffering for Métis people began around the time when the fur trade was nearing its end and the colonial period was beginning (Mackie, 1996) - p. 38

the story of Métis people choose to not speak openly about their ancestry may be the most common thread in Métis stories. (p. 32)

looking off at the past as though it were a place one might still get to

Long ago, there lived a people

Like Rosaleen and Arthur's house, this had the feel of generations of people who had lived there before, families that had grown up, run and shouted through the hallways, broken things, grown things, fallen in love. Instead of the occupants owning the house, the house owned a part of each of them.

But in reality the old man did not leave an empty life, because it was filled to the brim with the ghost of his past.

The government announced that never again will this country allow such a 'lapse in humanity to poison us and strip people of their basic human rights.' Everybody looks back and wonders how we allowed it to happen in the first place. It all seems so simple now.

Without stories there is nothing. Stories are the world's memory. The past is erased without stories.

Each generation thinks it fights new battles. But the battles are the same. Only the people are different.

Did I know that the reason Hitler had been able to slaughter six million Jews without too much complaint from the world was that for two thousand years the world had been taught that Jews, not Romans, had killed that man?

Excuse me, you taught trope in Theresienstadt?

For no matter what the factual data were, all the books written about Blacks by their conquerors reflected the conquerors viewpoints.

In other words, there can be no real identity with our heritage until we know what our heritage really is. It is all hidden in our history, but we are ignorant of that history. We have been floating alone, basking blissfully in the sunny heritage of other peoples!

And, since I had learned that whites were once enslaved as generally as any other race, how did it come about that slavery was finally concentrated in Africa on Blacks only? In short, no books or other studies in high school and college answered or gave clues to answers to the problems that puzzled me the most.

questions which none seemed able to answer :How is it that white folks have everything and we have nothing? Slavery-how and why did we become their slaves in the first place? White children go to fine brick, stone and marble schools nine months a year while we go to a ramshackle old barn-like building only five-and-ahalf months, then to the cotton fields. Why?

In ancient times African and Ethiopian meant the same thing: A Black

For no matter what the factual data were, all the books written about Blacks by their conquerors reflected the conquerors viewpoints. Nothing else should have been expected.

We reshape the story even when we believe we are simply repeating it.

In this difficult era the most valuable commodity is the unfailing turn of the hours and how they retrieve for us the known harbor of yesterday.

You can keep nothing safe from our eyes and ears. This is your own history. We are your most perilous and dutiful brethren, the song of our hearts at once furious and sad. For only you could grant me these lyrical modes. I call them back to you. Here is the sole talent I ever dared nurture. Here is all of my American education.

I hate witches. Humans had the right idea, burning them at the stake.

other hand, New Orleans was a real

Then my great-grandfather was gone before I could ask him which vampire he meant.