Juan Goytisolo Quotes

The history of this country is told by showing people who have contributed to it.

We moved, and there was a golden era in the '40s when we were so conscious of who we were as Australians.

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

Nations without a past are contradictions in terms. What makes a nation is the past, what justifies one nation against others is the past, and historians are the people who produce it.

The past could liberate or imprison - it creates a nation's character, provides the nourishment or the poison a people imbibe in their very marrow.

A poem I write is not just about me; it is about national identity, not just regional but national, the history of people in relation to other people. I reach for these outward stories to make sense of my own life, and how my story intersects with a larger public history.

The biggest difference between England and America is that England has history, while America has geography.

A nation that forgets its past can function no better than an individual with amnesia.

History isn’t just what happened before we came on the scene. We are a part of history..

The history of every country begins in the heart of a man or woman.

A nation is a work of art and a work of time.

Happy is the nation without a history.

Nothing is so retentive as a nation's memory.

History is simply man’s desperate bid to give substance to his most visionary dreams.

Any nation that forgets its past cannot have a future.

A people without a positive history is like a vehicle without an engine.

American myths have never been colorless.

I don't think it's such a bad idea that people learn the same history in school. I think it tends to ground people and give them something to respond to and react against.

A country cannot develop without a strong identity.

A nation is the sum of its memories, and when those memories are allowed to die, it is less of a nation.

A country is made not by policy alone, but by its music, its entertainment shows, all of it.

In Australia, we cling on to whatever culture we have. We're such a multicultural country.

History is one of those marvelous and necessary illusions we have to deal with. It's one of the ways of dealing with our world with impossible generalities which we couldn't live without.

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

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.