#history

All over the world major museums have bowed to the influence of Disney and become theme parks in their own right. The past, whether Renaissance Italy or Ancient Egypt, is re-assimilated and homogenized into its most digestible form. Desperate for the new, but disappointed with anything but the familiar, we recolonize past and future. The same trend can be seen in personal relationships, in the way people are expected to package themselves, their emotions and sexuality, in attractive and instantly appealing forms. ↗

— J.G. Ballard

#disney #future #history #past #relationships

Nescire autem quid antequam natus sis acciderit, id est semper esse puerum. (To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child.) ↗

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

#latin #ignorance

Some people like the Jews, and some do not. But no thoughtful man can deny the fact that they are, beyond any question, the most formidable and most remarkable race which has appeared in the world. — Winston S. Churchill ↗

— Ellen Brazer

#espionage #historical-novel #history #holocaust #intrigue

Historical determinism is a recipe for political quietism. ↗

— Terry Eagleton

#apathy #apolitical #determinism #historical-determinism #history

Historians are left forever chasing shadows, painfully aware of their inability ever to reconstruct a dead world in its completeness however thorough or revealing their documentation. We are doomed to be forever hailing someone who has just gone around the corner and out of earshot. ↗

— Simon Schama

#history #historical

In the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope. ↗

— Barack Obama

#history #hope #america

Remember, remember the Fifth of November, The Gunpowder Treason and Plot, I know of no reason Why the gunpowder treason Should ever be forgot. Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes, t’was his intent To blow up the King and Parli’ment. Three-score barrels of powder below To prove old England’s overthrow; By God’s providence he was catch’d With a dark lantern and burning match. Holloa boys, holloa boys, let the bells ring. Holloa boys, holloa boys, God save the King! ↗

— Alan Moore

#gunpowder #king #november #treason #english

If I had been an Italian I am sure that I should have been whole-heartedly with you from the start to finish in your triumphant struggle against the bestial appetites and passions of Leninism." (Speech in Rome on 20 January, 1927, praising Mussolini) ↗

— Winston Churchill

#fascism #history #italy #lenin #politics

The problem is not the content of textbooks, but the very idea of them. ↗

— Sam Wineburg

#history #education

We learn from history that we don't learn from history! ↗

— Desmond Tutu

#history #south-africa #africa