Chiwetel Ejiofor Quotes

Without understanding your history, you can't get a perspective about the present.

I think people in general have neglected to learn about history.

There is nothing more dangerous than mislearning the lessons of history.

History is imperfect and biased, and it always, always has omissions. The most common omissions are the bits that the writer of that history took for granted that his readers would know.

Can't disagree with the need for a grasp of history.

You cannot not know history.

People don't know the past, even though we live in literate societies, because they don't trust the sources of the past.

I think we tend to be kind of ahistorical, and think that life as we are living it in the moment is all we know.

Like other Americans, U.S. journalists have often neglected the study of history; they have much remedial work to do in trying to understand who did what to whom, why and when - and who did it first.

Most of us get our history through story.

If history starts as a guest list, it has a tendency to end like the memory of a drunken party: misheard, blurred, fragmentary.

Our ignorance of history causes us to slander our own times.

I don't think you should ever run from history. You should learn from it and embrace it.

History is written not only for posterity but by posterity as well.

The lack of a sense of history is the damnation of the modern world.

We are raising students in America who are, by and large, historically illiterate.

There can be no dedication to Canada's future without a knowledge of its past.

Certainly, the illiterates of past centuries, then an enormous majority of mankind, knew little of the history of their respective countries and of their civilization. In the minds of modern illiterates, however, who know how to read and write and even teach in schools and at universities, history is present but blurred, in a state of strange confusion; Molière becomes a contemporary of Napoleon, Voltaire, a contemporary of Lenin.

Learning from history is impossible if the narrative is wrong.

Histories are to educate so that we understand better for ourselves and for motivation.

Americans are in vital need of the instruction that historians can provide.

If you really think about it, if we begin to teach history exactly the way that it happened - good, bad, ugly, no matter what - I believe that we're going to find that we are closer, more connected than we are apart.

Know thy history. Let it horrify you; let it inspire you.

Without knowing your own history, you are doomed to repeat it.

History lets you know exactly where you are today. And if you pay attention to it, it gives you a broad perspective of everyone. You can relate it to pretty much any time.