Julian Barnes Quotes

I know of no time in human history where ignorance was better than knowledge.

No man can know where he is going unless he knows exactly where he has been and exactly how he arrived at his present place.

It is impossible to understand change without context.

You can't really know where you are going until you know where you have been.

Time is the measurer of all things, but is itself immeasurable, and the grand discloser of all things, but is itself undisclosed.

History, in illuminating the past, illuminates the present, and in illuminating the present, illuminates the future.

If people do not know where they have been and what they have been they don't know what they are. They don't know where they going to have to go or where they still have to be.

If you would understand anything, observe its beginning and its development

A lot of things in history change over time.

But it is important to know this, to know your roots. To know where you started as a person. If not, your own life seems unreal to you. Like a puzzle. Vous comprenez? Like you have missed the beginning of a story and now you are in the middle of it, trying to understand.

I think that the best movies are made, not from a point of view that depends on your personal history, whether it's the color of your skin or the politics that you had or the place that you come from, but from a point of view of an understanding of human nature, an understanding of history, and an understanding of what motivates people.

Truth travels slowly, but it will reach even you in time.

Some people skip through life. Others are dragged through it. I sometimes wonder if we are moving through time, or whether time is moving through us. Light, unlike anything else in the universe is not effected by time. Light exists outside of time.. It is still a mystery to physicists.

There is a past which is gone forever, but there is a future which is still our own.

The past is the place we view the present from as much as the other way around.

As people used to be wrong about the motion of the sun, so they are still wrong about the motion of the future. The future stands still, it is we who move in infinite space.

History teaches everything, even the future.

What is time? If I am not asked, I know; if I am asked, I don't.

Time flies apace-we would fain believe that everything flies forward with it.

Reality is a question of perspective; the further you get from the past, the more concrete and plausible it seems - but as you approach the present, it inevitably seems more and more incredible.

History always constitutes the relation between a present and its past. Consequently fear of the present leads to mystification of the past

For all the compasses in the world, there's only one direction, and time is its only measure.

Sometimes we have to be patient because the one thing that is inevitable in life is evolution. Whether it comes at the pace that we are expecting it or not, it’s inevitable.

I don't think I'm before my time, I just don't think I'm in my time.

As history has demonstrated many times over, change may arrive slowly or quickly but it is the one constant, in one form or another, on which we can all count.