"History is the present. That's why every generation writes it anew. But what most people think of as history is its end product, myth."

History, People, End, Myth

30

Create Your Own Wallpaper

Standard

Customized

"History is the present. That's why every generation writes it anew. But what most people think of as history is its end product, myth."

Exlpore more History quotes

"Dr. Rex Curry, the professor and attorney from Florida, has debated and largely proven the unavoidable evidence that Hitler's National Socialism was significantly influenced by Bellamy's 'nationalistic' form of 'socialism.' Curry is famous for making the claim that Hitler adopted the 'stiff-arm salute' from Francis and Edward Bellamy."

A.E. Samaan, American Author

History, Ideology, Influence, Politics

"Every literary critic believes he will outwit history and have the last word."

Mason Cooley, American Writer

History, Literary, Will, Word

"Nationalism leads to all sorts of nasty things (even Nazi things) like fascism and war."

Christina Engela, South African Author

History, Nationalism, War, Fascism

"If we could read the secret history of our enemies we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility."

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, American Poet

History, Life, Enemies, Man

"I found myself thinking about President William McKinley, the third American president to be assassinated. He lived for several days after he was shot, and toward the end, his wife started crying and screaming, "I want to go, too! I want to go, too!" And with his last measure of strength, McKinley turned to her and spoke his last words: "We are all going."

John Green, American Author

History, Assassination, Death, Suffering

"They say that Caliph Omar, when consulted about what had to be done with the library of Alexandria, answered as follows: 'If the books of this library contain matters opposed to the Koran, they are bad and must be burned. If they contain only the doctrine of the Koran, burn them anyway, for they are superfluous.' Our learned men have cited this reasoning as the height of absurdity. However, suppose Gregory the Great was there instead of Omar and the Gospel instead of the Koran. The library would still have been burned, and that might well have been the finest moment in the life of this illustrious pontiff."

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Swiss Philosopher

History, Knowledge, Books, Observation

"Mankind have a little corrupted nature, for they were not born wolves, and they have become wolves; God has given them neither cannon of four-and-twenty pounders, nor bayonets; and yet they have made cannon and bayonets to destroy one another."

Voltaire, French Writer

History, Corruption, Nature, Violence, Humanity

"According to Adam One, the Fall of Man was multidimensional. The ancestral primates fell out of the trees; then they fell from vegetarianism into meat-eating. Then they fell from instinct into reason, and thus into technology; from simple signals into complex grammar, and thus into humanity; from firelessness into fire, and thence into weaponry; and from seasonal mating into an incessant sexual twitching. Then they fell from a joyous life in the moment into the anxious contemplation of the vanished past and the distant future."

Margaret Atwood, Canadian Novelist

History, Evolution, Humanity, Instinct, Change

"When it is impossible to stretch the very elastic threads of historical ratiocination any farther, when actions are clearly contrary to all that humanity calls right or even just, the historians produce a saving conception of 'greatness.' 'Greatness,' it seems, excludes the standards of right and wrong. For the 'great' man nothing is wrong, there is no atrocity for which a 'great' man can be blamed."

Leo Tolstoy, Russian Novelist

History, Justice, Morality, Power

"Humans are intelligent and resourceful. If we've been around a million or more years, why are we so disinclined to believe that we could have built cities 10,000, 20,000, 50,000 or even more years ago?"

Christina Engela, South African Author

History, Civilization, Truth, Imagination

Explore more quotes by E. L. Doctorow

"I can walk into a bookstore and hand over my credit card and they don't know who the hell I am. Maybe that says something about bookstore clerks."

Identity, Credit, Hell

"Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way."

Driving, Night, Writing

"Like art and politics, gangsterism is a very important avenue of assimilation into society."

Art, Society, Politics

"Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader - not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon."

Being, Fact, Feeling, Writing

"History is the present. That's why every generation writes it anew. But what most people think of as history is its end product, myth."

History, People, End, Myth

"Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go."

Writing, Exploration, Nothing

"Planning to write is not writing. Outlining, researching, talking to people about what you're doing, none of that is writing. Writing is writing."

People, Planning, Talking, Writing

"In the twentieth century one of the most personal relationships to have developed is that of the person and the state. It's become a fact of life that governments have become very intimate with people, most always to their detriment."

Life, People, Fact, Relationships

"The writer isn't made in a vacuum. Writers are witnesses. The reason we need writers is because we need witnesses to this terrifying century."

Reason, Writer, Writers

"There is no longer any such thing as fiction or nonfiction; there's only narrative."

Fiction,