#histories

Take your place, then. Look at what happened from every side and consider all the other ways it could have gone. Consider, even, an Africa unconquered altogether. Imagine those first Portuguese adventurers approaching the shore, spying on the jungle’s edge through their fitted brass lenses. Imagine that by some miracle of dread or reverence they lowered their spyglasses, turned, set their riggings, sailed on. Imagine all who came after doing the same. What would that Africa be now? All I can think of is the other okapi, the one they used to believe in. A unicorn that could look you in the eye. ↗

— Barbara Kingsolver

#alternative-histories #freedom #freedom

I worry about anthropomorphism as a form of self-deception. (The Christian religion is an anthropomorphic account of the universe.) ↗

— A.S. Byatt

#religion

Society mends its wounds. And that's invariably true in all the tragedies, in the comedies as well. And certainly in the histories. ↗

— Charlton Heston

#comedies #histories #invariably #society #tragedies

Hugh Everett's work has been described by many people in terms of many worlds, the idea being that every one of the various alternative histories, branching histories, is assigned some sort of reality. ↗

— Murray Gell-Mann

#assigned #been #being #described #every

If we look at the way the universe behaves, quantum mechanics gives us fundamental, unavoidable indeterminacy, so that alternative histories of the universe can be assigned probability. ↗

— Murray Gell-Mann

#assigned #behaves #fundamental #gives #histories

A Republic without parties is a complete anomaly. The histories of all popular governments show absurd is the idea of their attempting to exist without parties. ↗

— Franklin Pierce

#anomaly #attempting #complete #exist #governments

Today wouldn't have happened if histories weren't falsified. ↗

— Toba Beta

#falsified #histories #knowledge #life #people

I don't plan to write another science book, but I don't plan not to. I do enjoy writing histories, and taking subjects that are generally dull and trying to make them interesting. ↗

— Bill Bryson

#book #dull #enjoy #generally #histories

Histories are more full of examples of the fidelity of dogs than of friends. ↗

— Alexander Pope

#examples #fidelity #friends #full #histories

Deconstructing the concept of race not only conflicts with people's tendency to classify and build family histories according to common descent but also ignores the work of biologists studying non-human species. ↗

— J. Philippe Rushton

#also #biologists #build #classify #common