Mal Peet Quotes

Without understanding your history, you can't get a perspective about the present.

Literature transmits incontrovertible condensed experience... from generation to generation. In this way literature becomes the living memory of a nation.

I believe that patterns tend to repeat themselves and there are connections between the past and the present. There is the old proverb that reads, 'You can't know where you're going if you don't know where you've been'. For me, history is like that. When you take history and combine it with myth, then you get mystery.

Most of us get our history through story.

The history that lies inert in unread books does no work in the world …. our proper function is not to repeat the past but to make use of it

I like historical pieces. History was my favorite subject in school, it was the only subject I excelled in. I love the idea of history and the idea that we may have the opportunity to learn from our past mistakes.

A society that does not correctly interpret and appreciate its past cannot understand its present fortunes and adversities and can be caught unawares in a fast changing world.

I worry about children not having a sense of any direct connection to the past.

I think history is collective memories. In writing, I'm using my own memory, and I'm using my collective memory.

People don't know the past, even though we live in literate societies, because they don't trust the sources of the past.

It takes a perverse determination to drain that instinctive curiosity away and make history seem just remote, dead and disconnected from our contemporary reality. Conversely, it just takes skilful storytelling to recharge that connection to make the past come alive in our present.

I think people in general have neglected to learn about history.

I really feel sorry for kids who aren't interested in history - recent history, either, because it is this that made us what we are.

I don't think you should ever run from history. You should learn from it and embrace it.

No people can live in the past - not even in its own past. But if it no longer has a link with its history, it must of necessity perish. Persia, crowded with hardship and glory, ordeals and hopes. With the help of the Almighty, the lessons of the past constitute the best guide for the citizens of the future.

I tend to believe that film can try to save what still can be saved, in terms of our histories, our memories. Because a lot of things are disappearing very quickly, things are changing. We are living in very quick times, and we have a new generation who basically know nothing about events 30 years ago.

I haven't studied history - I couldn't give a discourse in medieval literature - but I am a personal historian, and I do a lot to take in the histories of the people around me.

Without knowing your own history, you are doomed to repeat it.

History lets you know exactly where you are today. And if you pay attention to it, it gives you a broad perspective of everyone. You can relate it to pretty much any time.

I realize the importance of retelling those stories is so that, one, we don't forget what our ancestors had to do so we can be where we are, and two, to just educate the newer generation. I'm being educated by all these films ['Race' and 'Selma'] and the things I've had the opportunity to be a part of, and kids even younger than me are being educated, too. It's important to make sure those stories never die.

When history is erased, people's moral values are also erased.

We've got to know our history. We have to be able to bring our children to a place that they can be proud of.

You cannot not know history.

We've got to map all of our ancient history before it's gone because, let's face it, if we don't have a common heritage to share, something to get excited about, then what are we living for?

History is the interpretation of the significance that the past has for us.