Historical Recall Quotes

History is not what you thought. It is what you can remember. All other history defeats itself.

When something happens far back in the past, people often can't recall exact details. Blame depends upon point of view. There may be a villain, but reality is frustrating because it's often ambiguous.

To conjure a particular knowledge you visualize an architectural structure and then you walk around and see the details that then bring back the words or the poetry or the lines of thought. Memory's going extinct because we rely on machines and copies and so on. The idea of working with structures that conjure dreams, personages, history, time, that can be contained in this way as you walk through your mind, is a challenge.

As the great philosopher George Santayana would have said, 'those who cannot remember the past . . . should simply read Jan Van Meter's Tippecanoe and Tyler Too.' Van Meter's greatest hits collection of slogans is the catchiest ever retelling of American history. It's like the greatest minds of Madison Avenue sat down to write a history book. They don't make sound bites like they used to!

All the wrong people remember Vietnam. I think all the people who remember it should forget it, and all the people who forgot it should remember it.

It's possible to be satisfied with a day's work or a cake, but a life... what is a life but a history of events badly remembered?

Christianity doesn't demand that we worship our ancestors. If we don't remember our ancestors, then, in all likelihood, we cannot also recall the distant past.

The history of a battle, is not unlike the history of a ball. Some individuals may recollect all the little events of which the great result is the battle won or lost, but no individual can recollect the order in which, or the exact moment at which, they occurred, which makes all the difference as to their value or importance. ..