“People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.”
“And the whole world watched, and history remembered.”
“Much of history is unwritten. Remember this.”
“Idealism often rewrites history to suit her narrative.”
“No one is going to give you the education you need to overthrow them. Nobody is going to teach you your true history, teach you your true heroes, if they know that that knowledge will help set you free.”
“History, Mari muttered, as if she d overheard his thoughts. Why do we need to know what happened before we were born? So hopefully we get smarter and don t make the same mistakes again.”
“The past is a life sentence, a blunt instrument aimed at tomorrow.”
“It is easy to sanctify policies or identities by the deaths of victims. It is less appealing, but morally more urgent, to understand the actions of the perpetrators. The moral danger, after all, is never that one might become a victim but that one might be a perpetrator or a bystander.”
“Every period of human development has had its own particular type of human conflict—its own variety of problem that, apparently, could be settled only by force. And each time, frustratingly enough, force never really settled the problem. Instead, it persisted through a series of conflicts, then vanished of itself—what s the expression—ah, yes, not with a bang, but a whimper, as the economic and social environment changed. And then, new problems, and a new series of wars.”
“I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am, also, much more than that. So are we all.”
“We are usually told that democracy originated in ancient Athens—like science, or philosophy, it was a Greek invention. It’s never entirely clear what this is supposed to mean. Are we supposed to believe that before the Athenians, it never really occurred to anyone, anywhere, to gather all the members of their community in order to make joint decisions in a way that gave everyone equal say?”
“Memory is a tough place. You were there.”
“History knew the truth. History was the most inhuman product of humanity. It scooped up the whole of human will and, like the goddess Kali in Calcutta, dripped blood from its mouth as it bit and crunched.”
“Now I lay me down to sleep In mud that’s many fathoms deep. If I’m not here when you awake Just hunt me up with an oyster rake”
“Every atom you possess has almost certainly passed through several stars and been part of millions of organisms on its way to becoming you. We are each so atomically numerous and so vigorously recycled at death that a significant number of our atoms - up to a billion for each of us, it has been suggested - probably once belonged to Shakespeare. A billion more each came from Buddha and Genghis Khan and Beethoven, and any other historical figure you care to name. So we are all reincarnations - though short-lived ones. When we die, our atoms will disassemble and move off to find new uses elsewhere - as part of a leaf or other human being or drop of dew.”
“You make no sense! You went somewhere to discover your place in history? How can that be? History is what is done and behind us.” He shook his head, slowly this time. “History is what we do in our lives. We create it as we go along.” He smiled enigmatically. “The future is another kind of history.”
“History doesn t repeat itself, but it harmonizes, and what it usually makes is the devil s music.”