Norman Davies Quotes

When they come downstairs from their Ivory Towers, idealists are very apt to walk straight into the gutter.

Young people think that nothing bad will ever happen to them.

I was spoiled in a very strange way as a child, because everybody told me, from the moment I was able to hear, that I was absolutely marvelous, and I never heard a discouraging word for years, you see. I didn't know what was ahead of me.

And at 19, you think you rule the world, and you can control things. And a lot of times, you don't.

I've never been scared, but I'm very naive.

I was married when I was 17. I knew nothing. I was full of romance.

Hope is generally a wrong guide, though it is good company along the way.

I come armed with a really good ignorance. I don't strive toward ignorance. I come by it naturally.

The belief in the possibility of a short decisive war appears to be one of the most ancient and dangerous of human illusions.

It is better to have your head in the clouds, and know where you are... than to breathe the clearer atmosphere below them, and think that you are in paradise.

When I was in my twenties, I thought I was bulletproof.

The light at the end of the tunnel is just the light of an oncoming train.

I am disappointed when I don't win, because I want to believe I can win on every horse I ride, which is a ridiculous thing to think. Even if I'm on a horse that I have woken up thinking has no chance, by the time I've reached the course, I'll have convinced myself that it can win and will be disappointed if it doesn't.

I was too much of an innocent when I went to university.

To be candid, some people have given positive thinking a bad name. I can't stand to hear some gung-ho individual say that with positive thinking you can just do 'anything.' If you think about that one for a moment, you recognize the absurdity of it.

What passes for optimism is most often the effect of an intellectual error.

I guess I kind of lived in a fairytale world... looking at everything through rose-colored glasses. I probably always will, to a certain extent.

When you don't know that you don't know, it's a lot different than when you do know that you don't know.

We cast away priceless time in dreams, born of imagination, fed upon illusion, and put to death by reality.

Illusion is an anodyne, bred by the gap between wish and reality.

The innocence that feels no risk and is taught no caution, is more vulnerable than guilt, and oftener assailed.

When you're young, you're immortal, or so you think, and you never think there will be problems ahead.

Love makes you blind. One day you're in love, the next day you wake up and realize that not everything is perfect.

I got so famous with so many new people entering my life. You can imagine how it was for an 18-year-old who was playing effortlessly and savouring every moment of my success. I had lost all sense of reality.

We can tend to be too ambitious when we're young, and a little blind.