Helen Dunmore Quotes

Ere we can forecast the future we must understand the present and bring a just sense of proportion to our review of the history of the past.

You cannot not know history.

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.

If you don't know about it, you can't get it.

Knowledge is not eating, and we cannot expect to devour and possess what we mean. Knowledge is recognition of something absent; it is a salutation, not an embrace.

Knowledge is recognition of something absent; it is a salutation, not an embrace.

We are products of the past and its useful to remember that as we move into the future.

It would be well if, in studying the past, we could always bear in mind the problems of the present

The present enables us to understand the past, not the other way round.

Our understanding of the thought of the past is liable to be the more adequate, the less the historian is convinced of the superiority of his own point of view, or the more he is prepared to admit the possibility that he may have to learn something, not merely about the thinkers of the past, but from them.

To make a discovery is not necessarily the same as to understand a discovery.

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.

Being in London has really taught me how important history is. Just having information of the past. It helps you predict the future, which is all we really have as, you know, humans.

There's a million different ways you can look at a moment.

There's power in turning to the past to illuminate the current state of things.

I don't think a lot of people really know what goes into something that they see.

I'm always wary of the lessons of the past. There's a lot of past out there, and you can draw whatever lessons you want.

I'm interested in the way in which the past affects the present and I think that if we understand a good deal more about history, we automatically understand a great more about contemporary life.

All history must be mobilized if one would understand the present.

I do not believe that any man can adequately appreciate the world of to-day unless he has some knowledge of -- a little more than a slight knowledge, some feeling for and of -- the history of the world of the past.

You can't make sense of the present unless a part of you lives in the past.

The disadvantage of men not knowing the past is that they do not know the present.

…everything has a past. Everything – a person, an object, a word, everything. If you don’t know the past, you can’t understand the present and plan properly for the future.

I want my children to have access to something that looks beyond what I call the tyranny of now. You read the paper, everyone talks about that thing [in the news] that day, and all the subconscious really important stuff that's going on is being neglected. The beauty of history is that historians have the ability to find patterns, the big picture. When you make a movie, you try to find that. I'm doing in the cinema what historians try to do in their own media.

I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.