Historical Revisionists Quotes

Some historical revisionists have also attempted to diminish the role of God and religion in our nation's past. A careful examination of the records, however, makes it quite clear that religion was a very important factor in the development of our nation. In 1831 when Alexis de Tocqueville came to America to try to unravel the secrets to the success of a fledgling nation that was already competing with the powers of Europe on virtually every level, he discovered that we had a fantastic public educational system that rendered anyone who had finished the second grade completely literate. He was more astonished to discover that the Bible was an important tool used to teach moral principles in our public schools. No particular religious denomination was revered, but rather commonly accepted biblical truths became the backbone of our social structure. ~ Ben Carson

Historical revisionists find what they set out to find. ~ Gregg Frazer

America is a post-Christian nation only in the sense that we have built a tenement on the foundation of a palace. ~ Ron Brackin

With improved historical records, and easier access to them, we actually have better reasons for hating one another, for anger and violence toward one another. ~ Richard Rohr

It is easier to start a war than to end it. ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Silence. Ah (...) Isn't that something? Did you know this is how other families are? They're quiet. Ask one of these people sitting here. They'll tell you. They've got famillies. This is how some families are all the time. And some people like to call these families repressed, or emotionally stunted or whatever, but do you know what I say? (...) I say, lucky fuckers. Lucky, lucky fuckers. (...) What a peaceful existence. What a joy their lives must be. They open a door and all they've got behind it is a bathroom or a lounge. Just neutral spaces. And not this endless maze of present rooms and past rooms and the things said in them years ago and everybody's old historical shit all over the place. They're not constantly making the same old mistakes. They're not always hearing the same old shit. They don't do public performances of angst on public transport. Really, these people exist. I'm telling you. The biggest traumas of their lives are things like recarpeting. Bill-paying. Gate-fixing. They don't mind what their kids do in life as long as they're reasonably, you know, healthy. Happy. And every single fucking day is not this huge battle between who they are and who they should be, what they were and what they will be. Go on, ask them. And they'll tell you. No mosque. Maybe a little church. Hardly any sin. Plenty of forgiveness. No attics. No shit in attics. No skeletons in cupboards. No great-grandfathers. I will put twenty quid down now that Samad is the only person in here ~ Zadie Smith

There are filmmakers like me in different parts of the world that have a story they want to tell, and it's a story that comes out of a certain historical reality within their own life. Then you get committed all the way and however long it takes, stay very committed. ~ Haile Gerima

Moonlight does things to a street scene that no other natural or man-made phenomenon can effect. People walk slower, their smiles lingering on contended faces. Horses that usually move along fast enough to stir up the dust off the street plod lazily in the clear, cool night. And in dark corners where people forget to look, the goons come out. ~ Bailey Bristol

Proficiency in art is a contract with your self and the empowerment of your self. Not all of us demand or even desire proficiency, but for those who do it's necessary to temper the influence of groups. And while some artists think history is bunk, the historical evidence is overwhelming: "In my isolation I grow stronger." ~ Paul Gauguin

This is the average age of my Hunters, and all young maidens for whom I am patron, before they go astray."
"Go astray?"
"Grow up. Become smitten with boys. Become silly, preoccupied, insecure. ~ Rick Riordan

One of the great lessons I learned about historical fiction from writing 'Loving Frank' is that you don't try to disguise what people did; my approach was to try to understand the characters and why they did what they did. ~ Nancy Horan

Shakespeare set a lot of his dramas in a historical perspective or war perspective, or he would study what was going on at that time. ~ Marcia Gay Harden

Most top predators of the planet are majestic creatures. Millions of years of dominion have filled them with self-confidence. Sapiens by contrast is more like a banana-republic dictator. Having so recently been one of the underdogs of the savannah, we are full of fears and anxieties over our position, which makes us doubly cruel and dangerous. Many historical calamities, from deadly wars to ecological catastrophes, have resulted from this over-hasty jump. A ~ Yuval Noah Harari

Most of the history is a divine work of fiction. ~ Kedar Joshi

He closed his eyes and allowed himself to remember the taste of her and the feel of her and the smell of her. She was quite lovely. She was altogether ravishing. She would set any man's blood on fire. He shouldn't have kissed her. ~ Marguerite Kaye

The general consensus among historians, among the ones who can handle the fact that 'Lincoln' is, in fact, historical fiction, is that we demonstrate enormous fidelity to history and that, beyond that, we've actually contributed a line of thinking about Lincoln's presidency that's somewhat original. ~ Tony Kushner

I don't think the British carry a historical consciousness either. ~ Tom Paulin

We are not capable of producing a concept of time that is at once cosmological, biological, historical and individual ~ Paul Ricoeur

Those who refuse to reform may not make mistakes, but they will be blamed for not assuming their historical responsibility. ~ Li Keqiang

Here Marx simply assumes that proletarianization has already occurred and that a functioning labor market already exists. But he does, however, want to make "one thing" clear: Nature does not produce on the one hand owners of money or commodities, and on the other hand men possessing nothing but their own labour-power. This relation has no basis in natural history, nor does it have a social basis common to all periods of human history. It is clearly the result of a past historical development, the product of many economic revolutions, of the extinction of a whole series of older formations of social production. ~ David Harvey

From a historical point of view, restricting the availability of addictive substances must be seen as a peculiarly perverse example of Calvinist dominator thought - a system in which the sinner is to be punished in this world by being transformed into an exploitable, of his cash, by the criminal/governmental combine that provides the addicitve substances. The image is more horrifying than that of the serpent that devours itself - it is once again the Dionysian image of the mother who devours her children, the image of a house divided against itself. ~ Terence McKenna

I have long been active in and supportive of conservation and historical preservation causes. ~ Jack L. Chalker

Transcending class distinctions, the speaker [Stalin] portrays the relation between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat as a mere division of labor. The workers and soldiers achieve the revolution, Guchkov and Miliukov "fortify" it.[ ... ] This superintendent's approach to the historical process is exactly characteristic of the leaders of Menshevism, this handing out of instructions to various classes and then patronizingly criticizing their fulfillment. ~ Leon Trotsky

In a moment of terrible heartbreak, he (The Sweep) had taught her to see wonder. ~ Jonathan Auxier

[the framers of the Constitution] intended our government should be a republic, which differs more widely from a democracy than a democracy from a despotism. ~ Fisher Ames

In pure mathematics the mind deal only with its own creations and imaginations. The concepts of number and form have not been derived from any source other than the world of reality. The ten fingers on which men learned to count, that is, to carry out the first arithmetical operation, may be anything else, but they are certainly not only objects that can be counted, but also the ability to exclude all properties of the objects considered other than their number-and this ability is the product of a long historical evolution based on experience. Like the idea of number, so the idea of form is derived exclusively from the external world, and does not arise in the mind as a product of pure thought. ~ Friedrich Engels

I would be anyone if only I could be with you. ~ Shelly Thacker

Rule three? You mean there's more? ~ Shehanne Moore

For all those who are interested in the spiritual, emotional, intellectual, esthetic, historical or any other aspects of our dance art ... It is high time that our universities had faculties for dance, giving the art its due place in the academic world. ~ Padma Subrahmanyam

We the People . . . The People of the Long House. ~ P.J. Parker

I'd never leave you, Fairy."

"Truly? Not even to be a pirate?"

"I promise. I might be a highwayman, though. ~ Kerrigan Byrne

Among the virtues and vices that make up the British character, we have one vice, at least, that Americans ought to view with sympathy. For they appear to be the only people who share it with us. I mean our worship of the antique. I do not refer to beauty or even historical association. I refer to age, to a quantity of years. ~ William Golding

The extension of the moral-historical perspective makes the meaning of the thesis of the athletic and somatic renaissance apparent. At the transition from the nineteenth to the twentieth century, the phenomenon labelled the 'rebirth of antiquity' in the language regulations of art history entered a phase that fundamentally modified the motives of our identification with cultural relics from antiquity, even from the early classical period. Here, as we have seen, one finds a regression to a time in which the changing of life had not yet fallen under the command of life-denying asceticisms. This 'supra-epochal' time could just as easily be called the future, and what seems like a regression towards it could also be conceived of as a leap forwards. ~ Peter Sloterdijk

The significance of the effect is determined by the importance of the immediate cause. ~ L. Smith

If the religious spirit be ever mentioned in any historical narration, we are sure to meet afterwards with a detail of the miseries which attend it. And no period of time can be happier or more prosperous, than those in which it is never regarded or heard of. ~ David Hume

Like, I took no poetic license with 'Schindler's List' because that was historical, factual documents. ~ Steven Spielberg

We like to think that we think for ourselves, but it is not that simple. We think like the people we most admire and need. Everyone belongs to a community that reinforces the plausibility of some beliefs and discourages others. Berger notes that many have concluded from this fact that, because we are all locked into our historical and cultural locations, it is impossible to judge the rightness or wrongness of competing beliefs. ~ Timothy Keller

My likely historical significance is a terrible burden. ~ Calvin ~ Bill Watterson

We who have seen the truth will reshape the world, and Ireland shall be our entrance to this world beyond words. ~ Orna Ross

My butler informs me you had a book on your person when you came to call." She did not look up. "His vision is excellent, my lord." "Was it your journal?" he pressed. He wondered if she kept a diary as well . . . and what she might write about him. He hoped something scandalous. He'd love to make it come true. ~ Erica Ridley

I understand, gentlemen," John Kennedy said. "If you find that life it's not easy, let me tell you, death is worse. ~ Pierre Marshesso