Make-believe has so long held sway that truth arrives on the scene with all the aspect of an ogre. As a consequence, the real history of their country is a sealed book to the vast majority of the Irish. They neither ask for it nor is it given them.
The arts in America exist in spite of America, not because of America.
If you decide to move to another country and to live within its laws you don't express your disregard for the essence of the culture. It's a form of aggression.
If a nation allows its literary culture to die, it's a sign that it doesn't fundamentally care.
This is what Hollywood tends to do. It tends to disregard tradition, history and anything factual, twisting it and turning it and making it all okay regardless of what the English may think of it.
People seem to lose all respect for the past; events succeed each other with such velocity that the most remarkable one of a few years gone by, is no more remembered than if centuries had closed over it.
Countess of Blessington
Going to Russia is going to be nothing for me. I'm going to treat it like it's the U.S. because, at the end of the day, it's one man, one ring.
Americans have no sense of history. And not much memory. They don't remember what happened yesterday.
A contempt of the monuments and the wisdom of the past, may be justly reckoned one of the reigning follies of these days, to which pride and idleness have equally contributed.
I think Americans, as a nation and culture, once something is recognized for a week or two, people kind of forget about.
[Cultural department] understand nothing but bureaucratic daily affairs. They don't care about culture.
