Larry McMurtry Quotes

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

American politicians who dwell on American exceptionalism only dishonor us by suggesting we play dumb to our past.

Americans today don’t know history—even the smart ones who went to Ivy League schools.

My first reaction every time I delve into an episode of history that I don't know very much about is... my first reaction is anger that my teachers never taught me about it.

No man surely has so short a memory as the American.

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

Americans are in vital need of the instruction that historians can provide.

I had access to books, and I could read... but that more foundational, basic historical awareness, I didn't have any of that.

I love history, and I thought I knew history well, but I was shocked by how little I knew about it.

Poles must understand history but we must also overcome it if it is obstructing our contemporary goals.

Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

I think that America has an obsession with history, really.

I don't think the British carry a historical consciousness either.

An accurate knowledge of the past of a country is necessary for everyone who would understand its present, and who desires to judge of its future.

One of the things that really bothers me is that Americans don't have any sense of history. The majority of Americans don't have any idea of where we've come from, so they naturally succumb to the kind of cliche version that Ronald Reagan represented.

But we cannot rely on memorials and museums alone. We can tell ourselves we will never forget and we likely won't. But we need to make sure that we teach history to those who never had the opportunity to remember in the first place.

Like other Americans, U.S. journalists have often neglected the study of history; they have much remedial work to do in trying to understand who did what to whom, why and when - and who did it first.

It is only education and understanding of the past that teaches us not to repeat history.

Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it.

The lack of a sense of history is the damnation of the modern world.

History is an instrument of the most genuine patriotic spirit

Make-believe has so long held sway that truth arrives on the scene with all the aspect of an ogre. As a consequence, the real history of their country is a sealed book to the vast majority of the Irish. They neither ask for it nor is it given them.

Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it.

History education in schools is so poor that students often enter college ignorant of the past - and leave just as unenlightened.

You simply can't understand the present if you don't understand the past. There is no more alarming case study of the consequences of historical ignorance than President Trump.