counterfactual history Quotes

The contrafactual history is what it would have been the other way. Think of the Kennedy triumph in the missiles crisis. Worked out fine. Khrushchev blinked and so forth. The other road, you don't want to think too hard about. You could have had nuclear missiles wiping out a tenth of the globe.

I mean, if Beethoven had been killed in a plane crash at twenty-two, the history of music would have been very different. As would the history of aviation, of course.

Archduke Franz Ferdinand Found Alive! First World War a Mistake!

The history of things that didn't happen has never been written.

If Beethoven had been killed in a plane crash at the age of 22, it would have changed the history of music and of aviation.

Bryce Zabel and I went down the road of revising the Kennedy historical record together on the NBC seriesDark Skies. This time instead of giving new meaning to the established JFK chronology, hes created a brand new one altogether.Surrounded by Enemiesis an exhilarating ride, full of twists and turns that never were, but surely could have been.

It's subjunctive history. You know, the subjunctive? The mood used when something may or may not have happened. When it is imagined.

The other thing I said is the great irony is you will be back fighting against your own weapons. Had [Bashar] Assad been bombed when he used chemical weapons two years ago, ISIS would be in charge of all of Syria now.

I believe history will come to view 9/11 as an event on par with November 22, 1963, the date on which John F. Kennedy was murdered, cutting short a presidency that was growing ever more promising. Dreams died that day in Dallas; it is easy to imagine the 1960s turning out rather differently had President Kennedy lived.

We will never know what would have happened if President Johnson had said no to more troops and more war [in Vietnam]. We do know what happened when he said yes.

I don't write fantasy; I write historical novels about an imaginary place.

'The Man in the High Castle' is still the best what-if-the-Axis-had-won novel.

Historians are not good at hypothetical questions.

African cavalry mounted on rhinos or hippos would have made mincemeat of European cavalry mounted on horses. But it couldnt happen.

If King Harold had had swans on his side, England would still be Saxon.

I'm writing a movie about Mozart going to New York in the '60s. I've been reading so many novels.

In history there are no control groups. There is no one to tell us what might have been. We weep over the might have been, but there is no might have been. There never was.

I think Teach for America has suffered from the fact that I did not teach, in a major way. I also think if I had taught, I wouldn't have started Teach for America.

In counterfactual history, nothing is certain.