Quotes About History

Memory and self-representation are thus inseparable, for those who represent themselves are also saying this: remember us.

He was more embarrassed and discreet about sex than about things I thought more difficult, like killing people, which pretty much defined the history of Catholicism, where

and while the list could go on and on and on, the point was simply this: the most important thing we could never forget was that we could never forget. When

It proceeds from the idea that all wars are fought twice, the first time on the battlefield, the second time in memory. Any

if history had never happened, neither as farce nor as tragedy, if the serpent of language had not bitten me, if I had never been born, if my mother was never cleft, if you needed no more revisions, and if I saw no more of these visions, please, could you please just let me sleep?

Nations, without exception, disposed of body parts all the time. How could we bear ourselves otherwise if not for the mass graves of our forgetting?

No, we fought to the tunes of love songs, for we were the Italians of Asia.

Viet Thanh Nguyen

To be anti-American only makes you a reactionary. In our case, having defeated the Americans, we no longer defined ourselves as anti-American. We are simply one hundred percent Vietnamese.

We had not chosen to be debased by the French, to be divided by them into an unholy trinity of north, center, and south, to be turned over to the great powers of capitalism and communism for a further bisection, then given roles as the clashing armies of a Cold War chess match played in air-conditioned rooms by white men wearing suits and lies.

The tendency to separate war stories from immigrant stories means that most Americans don't understand how many of the immigrants and refugees in the United States have fled from wars—many of which this country has had a hand in.

As Hegel said, tragedy was not the conflict between right and wrong but right and right, a dilemma none of us who wanted to participate in history could escape.

Perhaps my problem was that I thought we Vietnamese had hit bottom, under the French, and then saw there was another bottom beneath that with the Americans, when in reality, there was yet another bottom to discover - our own.

Which was worse, my country reduced to a war or my country turned into cliché?

The Movie was just a sequel to our war and a prequel to the next one that America was destined to wage.

Haunted and haunting, human and inhuman, war remains with us and within us, impossible to forget but difficult to remember.

So why are we supposed to not forget our culture? Isn't my culture right here since I was born here?

Viet Thanh Nguyen

Ever since the first caveman discovered fire and decided that the ones still living in darkness were benighted, it's been civilization against barbarism . . . with every age having its own barbarians.

Unheralded we came into this world. Unheralded we will go out. But while we are in this world, we do such deeds that even if this generation does not remember, the next generation cannot forget.

The ifs and buts of history...form an insubstantial if intoxicating diet.

Yesterday is history we write today to repeat it tomorrow.

You know you are old when you discover that your children are learning in history class what you studied in current events.

When Hitler launched Operation "Barbarossa," virtually all BT's were abandoned.