Quotes About History

I was born in 1920, during the influenza pandemic, and I'm going to die in 2020, during the outbreak of coronavirus. What an elegant name for such a terrible scourge.

De Atahualpa se decía que tenía miles de doncellas en su serrallo y una multitud incalculable de esclavos

Pedro y Francisco agradecían la suerte de ser católicos, garantía de salvación del alma, y españoles, es decir, superiores al resto de los mortales. Eran hidalgos de España, soberana del mundo, larga y ancha, más poderosa que el antiguo Imperio romano, señalada por Dios para descubrir, conquistar, cristianizar, fundar y poblar los más remotos rincones de la Tierra.

Isla de Pascua

lo amaban sin sofocarlo y lo trataban con la negligencia habitual de esa época, antes de que los niños se convirtieran en proyectos.

Mucho se me olvida o se me tuerce, no retengo lugares, fechas ni nombres, en cambio jamás se me escapa una buena historia.

No me explico qué atrajo a Willie, que tiene un pasado de mujeres altas y rubias, a mí me atrojo su historia.

No me explico qué atrajo a Willie, que tiene un pasado de mujeres altas y rubias, a mí me atrajo su historia.

En la dimensión del cosmos y en el trayecto de la historia somos insignificantes, después de nuestra muerte todo sigue igual, como si jamás hubiéramos existido.

During the war the Chilean Nazi Party paraded with brown uniforms, flags bearing swastikas, and arms raised in a Nazi salute. My grandmother ran alongside, throwing tomatoes at them. This woman was an exception because in Chile people were so anti-Semitic that the word Jew was a dirty word, and I have friends who had their mouths washed out with soap for having dared say it.

The technique of "disappearing" ideological enemies, which several Latin American dictatorships were so strongly committed to during the seventies and eighties, had been practiced in Chile nearly a century earlier. None of which takes away from the fact that our democracy was the most solid, and the oldest, on the continent.

I fell in love with my country because of the stories my grandfather told me and because of our travels together through the south. He taught me history and geography, showed me maps, made me read Chilean writers, corrected my grammar and handwriting. As a teacher, he was short on patience but long on severity; my errors made him red with anger, but if he was content with my work he would reward me with a wedge of Camembert cheese

One of the most tenacious myths of modern military history is that of German military omnicompetence. Even the staunchest critics prefer to believe that military disasters happen by design, rather than to imagine that structural dysfunction, or just plain mistakes, could have riddled the premier institution of the Kaiserreich. But that was precisely what was so embarrassing about the war in SWA: it displayed German military incompetence.

The day we arrived in Auschwitz, there were so many people to be burned that the four crematoriums couldn't handle the task. So the Germans built big open fires to throw the children in.

Well, there have been periods in the past when prime ministers of Australia and New Zealand were at each others' throats publicly and frequently. That's not productive at all.

I see the great continuities in New Zealand history as being decency and common sense and up until now when we've confronted these things we've been able to talk them through, and I'm sure we will with this issue as well.

Canada, Australia and New Zealand have apologised for their treatment of native peoples.

I'm quite proud of growing up in New Zealand where, from quite early on in primary school, you're learning to count in Maori, Maori mythology and dances and colours and history, and I think that gives a child a really good grounding.

If you asked someone who was a Maori about how they felt about how they were treated in Australia or New Zealand, you'll get an answer. They'll have something to tell you. And you might not like what you hear.

'Commonwealth' is not a word I ever used growing up in Colombo. There, in the late 1950s, it would have meant little more than New Zealand lamb and Anchor butter at the cold stores.

We've had a debate about immigration in New Zealand for some time. Now what we're trying to champion in that conversation is a recognition that New Zealand has been built off immigration. I myself am a third-generation New Zealander.

I come from a place that is very politically sophisticated and progressive. New Zealand was the first place to give women the right to vote.

If I would be born in New Zealand, maybe, I would never write the Polish Requiem or pieces which were connected with the history of war. But this was my childhood. War was the main subject, and also in our family.

I had to make my history quick because there would be no future, merely a gossamer world blown about on the zeitgeist, till zeitgeist, the wind of the times, is blasted away by kamikaze, the wind of God.