Eric Hobsbawm Quotes

Any nation that forgets its past cannot have a future.

A nation’s attitude toward its own history is like a window into its own soul.

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

Nothing is so retentive as a nation's memory.

History is an instrument of the most genuine patriotic spirit

The sense of German history is a constantly repeated attempt to find the beginning.

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.

History is nothing but gossip about the past, with the hope that it might be true.

Most of us get our history through story.

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

History is neither a political fable in which all the brothers are valiant and all the sisters virtuous, nor is it a tabloid expose, full of crimes and follies, signifying nothing but victimization. There is, I must admit, a caustic delight in unveiling the frailties of our Jeffersons and our Lincolns, but the delight turns malevolent when it serves only to strip the American past of anything remarkable or exceptional, or when it demeans or discourages civic engagement and confidence.

A nation creates itself not just with what it remembers, but with what it forgets.

History is the memory of states.

From the start, the nation’s history has been weighted with a sense of great destiny and huge meaning, of visions not found on the fringes of the story but at its very core, actively shaping the minds of those who make history and those who write about it.

Happy is the nation without a history.

Writing history is writing the soul of the past...

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.

Most national holidays in most countries rest on selective memories of the past.

I just love learning about the past and everything we've been through as people and as a country.

Our national future does not demand we revise and malign our past.

For history is to the nation as memory is to the individual.

Getting its history wrong is part of being a nation.

My country has no history, only a past.