Marjane Satrapi Quotes

History uses a unit of measure for time that is different from that of the lifespan of the individual, whereas man is only too ready to measure the evolution of history by his own yardstick.

As we know from the study of history, no new system can impose itself upon a previous one without incorporating many of the elements to be found in the latter.

Revolutions are not made: they come. A revolution is as natural a growth as an oak. It comes out of the past. Its foundations are laid far back.

If you go back 150 years you are a reactionary; but if you go back 1000 years, you are in the foremost ranks of progress.

The word change, so dear to our Europe, has been given a new meaning: it no longer means a new stage of coherent development (as it was understood by Vico, Hegel or Marx), but a shift from one side to another, from front to back, from the back to the left, from the left to the front (as understood by designers dreaming up the fashion for the next season).

I think the role of artists in the past was very different. Artists had less responsibility in many ways.

Those who compare the age in which their lot has fallen with a golden age which exists only in imagination, may talk of degeneracy and decay; but no man who is correctly informed as to the past, will be disposed to take a morose or desponding view of the present.

Custom ... changes the very nature of things; and what was honorable a thousand years ago, may probably be looked upon as infamous now.

You look back in time to when there was slavery and you think 'how did people even remotely believe that this was a good idea?'.It's incomprehensible for us to think of what the mindset was 100 or 200 years ago. I hope to make the present as incomprehensible to the future as the past is to us.

To understand the living present, and the promise of the future, it is necessary to remember the past.

Armed with the knowledge of our past, we can with confidence charter a course for our future. Culture is an indispensable weapon in the freedom struggle. We must take hold of it and forge the future with the past.

It is especially difficult for modern people to conceive that our modern, scientific age might not be an improvement over the prescientific period.

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

If we read the words and attitudes of the past through the pompous "wisdom" of the considered moral judgments of the present, we will find nothing but error.

My definition of democracy is - A form and a method of Government whereby revolutionary changes in the social life are brought about without bloodshed. That is the real test. It is perhaps the severest test. But when you are judging the quality of the material you must put it to the severest test.

Western Civilization has been in a state of decline since the Edwardian age, say 1910. That was the height of Greco-Roman European civilization. Then there was the First World War. That was the beginning of the end. That civilization has been in a decline ever since. But from the American triumphalist point of view our wonderful electronic revolution is really the forefront of an ongoing wonderful civilization.

I love history. It was the only thing I did well at in school. I'm not ashamed to admit that I was not a good student but I was great at history.

Who owns history? Everyone and no one--which is why the study of the past is a constantly evolving, never-ending journey of discovery.

History is a great dust heap.

Past art is subject to change.

We must not confuse the present with the past. With regard to the past, no further action is possible.

My generation those who were students in the late 60s was always, in the words of the Who, talking about our generation. That's what we thought of ourselves, as the most important thing since sliced bread. And the "we" that we meant was really the Western Europeans and American generation. And as I think back I suppose I have a sense of guilt on behalf of my generation, a sense that we were terribly provincial and didn't understand the really important stuff that was going on in Eastern Europe.

As all historians know, the past is a great darkness, and filled with echoes.

[T]he Constitution was a product of its times. [Progressive]

I prefer my history dead. Dead history is writ in ink, the living sort in blood.