Quotes About History

Timothy Snyder

the view of many reasonable people in 1933, just as it is the view of many reasonable people now.

If young people do not begin to make history, politicians of eternity and inevitability will destroy it. And to make history, young Americans will have to know some. This is not the end, but a beginning.

to make history, young Americans will have to know some. This is not the end, but a beginning.

After communism in eastern Europe came to an end in 1989–91, we imbibed the myth of an "end of history." In doing so, we lowered our defenses, constrained our imagination, and opened the way for precisely the kinds of regimes we told ourselves could never return.

When we lack a sense of past and future, the present feels like a shaky platform, an uncertain basis for action.

The anticipatory obedience of Austrians in March 1938 taught the high Nazi leadership what was possible.

Those who advocated Brexit, the departure of the United Kingdom from the European Union, imagined a British nation-state, though such a thing never existed. There was a British Empire, and then there was Britain as a member of the European Union. The move to separate from the EU is not a step backward onto firm ground, but a leap into the unknown.

If we believe that the Holocaust was a result of the inherent characteristics of Jews, Germans, Poles, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, or anyone else, then we are moving in Hitler's world. —

Fascists despised the small truths of daily existence, loved slogans that resonated like a new religion, and preferred creative myths to history or journalism.

When exactly was the 'again' in the president's slogan 'Make America great again'? Hint: It is the same 'again' that we find in 'Never again.

The nation faces forward. It is made and remade every day. If we believe that the nation resides in the orderly recitations of history given to us by our leaders, then our story is over

Fascists despised the small truths of daily existence, loved slogans that resonated like a new religion, and preferred creative myths to history or journalism. They used new media, which at the time was radio, to create a drumbeat of propaganda that aroused feelings before people had time to ascertain facts. And now, as then, many people confused faith in a hugely flawed leader with the truth about the world we all share. Post-truth is pre-fascism.

you once did nothing because you thought progress is inevitable, then you can continue to do nothing because you think time moves in repeating cycles.

The seduction by a mythicized pas prevents us from thinking about possible futures

You might one day be offered the opportunity to display symbols of loyalty. Make sure that such symbols include your fellow citizens rather than exclude them. Even the history of lapel pins is far from innocent.

History permits us to be responsible: not for everything, but for something.

History gives us the company of those who have done and suffered more than we have.

a twelve-year-old Jewish girl in Belarus wrote a last letter to her father: "I am saying good-bye to you before I die. I am so afraid of this death because they throw small children into the mass graves alive." She was among the more than five million Jews gassed or shot by the Germans.

Americans today are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism, or communism in the twentieth century. One advantage is that we might learn from their experience. Now is a good time to do so.

Americans today are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism, or communism in the twentieth century. Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience. Now is a good time to do so.

Any election can be the last, or at least the last in the lifetime of the person casting the vote.

Influential Americans such as Charles Lindbergh opposed war with the Nazis under the slogan "America First." It

The anticipatory obedience of Austrians in March 1938 taught the high Nazi leadership what was possible. It