Quotes About History

Those nostalgic for the region's good old days are not remembering; they're daydreaming.

The history of Europe—and indeed the world—is stained by the blood of nations convinced that the path to glory can be found by disparaging others and going it alone.

As for Hitler, they were not nearly so scared of him as they should have been.

In April 1945, immediately before surrendering the construction site, the Germans locked 1,046 of the workers into a barn and burned them alive.

ONE REASON, FRANKLY, IS DONALD TRUMP. IF WE THINK OF FASCISM as a wound from the past that had almost healed, putting Trump in the White House was like ripping off the bandage and picking at the scab.

On June 9, 1942, R?žena Spieglová was one of a group of Czechoslovak Jews sent by rail transport to the Nazi concentration camp in Terezín. On June 12, they were transported farther east to a destination we do not know for sure, probably a forested area in occupied Poland. There were no survivors from that transport. My maternal grandmother was fifty-four years old when she was murdered.

Every age has its own Fascism. —PRIMO LEVI

IF WE THINK OF FASCISM as a wound from the past that had almost healed, putting Trump in the White House was like ripping off the bandage and picking at the scab.

In the end, I believe these pages and the Book of Records return to the persistence of this desire: to know the times in which we are alive. To keep the record that must be kept and also, finally, to let it go.

You think that the things that matter are more difficult than words - to retreat from a confrontation, for instance, to work at changing something, truly changing something." She lifted her hand toward the bodies and the tanks. "Ai-ming, you're studying history to prepare for the examinations. What if revolution and violence are the only way?

Was this what music was, was it time itself containing fractions of seconds, minutes, hours, and all the ages, all the generations?

IN THOSE DAYS, your village might change hands every few weeks, one day to the Communists, the next to the Nationalists, the next to the Japanese. How easy it was to mistake your brother for a traitor or your beloved for an enemy, to fear that you yourself were born in the wrong moment of history. But in the teahouses, anyone could share a few songs, anyone could lift their wine cup and toast the validity and the continuity of love.

clear that she and her daughter were two separate people with very different life experiences, decide how much of her history to share with her daughter, and, finally, commit to changing her own behavior.

Odysseus inclines his head. "True. But fame is a strange thing. Some men gain glory after they die, while others fade. What is admired in one generation is abhorred in another." He spread his broad hands. "We cannot say who will survive the holocaust of memory. Who knows?" He smiles. "Perhaps one day even I will be famous. Perhaps more famous than you.

We cannot say who will survive the holocaust of memory.

Beneath my feet were the bones of a thousand years. I thought: I cannot bear this world a moment longer. Then, child, make another.

He smiled at me, and I saw the lines where other smiles had been.

You will pardon me if I do not rejoice at being one in a long line of villains.

We cannot say who will survive the holocaust of memory. Who knows?

You cannot make that promise, I wanted to shout. You know nothing. But whose fault was that? I had kept the face of the world veiled from him. I had painted his history in bright, bold colors, and he had fallen in love with my art. And now it was too late to go back and change it. If I was so old, I should be wise. I should know better than to howl when the bird was already flown.

Each man or woman who passed, she knew their history and would tell it to me, for she said that you must understand people if you would rule them.

I looked down at my body, bare in the fire's light, and tried to imagine it written over with its history: my palm with its lightning streak, my hand missing its fingers, the thousand cuts from my witch-work, the gristled furrows of my father's fire, the skin of my face like some half-melted taper. And those were only the things that had left marks. […] I was a golden witch, who had no past at all.

I had painted his history in bright, bold colours and he had fallen in love with my art. And now it was too late to go back and change it.

Have you no memories?" 'I am made of memories.