| HISTORICAL HINDSIGHTS Some very smart people can be downright cynical about history. Here are their thoughts. Please be aware that these thoughts do not necessarily indicate the thoughts of your lovable teacher. "History is a pack of lies about events that never happened told by people who weren't there." -George Santayana "History is more or less bunk." -Henry Ford "History is nothing but a parade of crimes and adversities." -Voltaire "I often think it odd that [history] should be so dull, for a great deal of it must be invention." -Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey "History (n.): An account mostly false, of events mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly fools." -Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary "The past actually happened but history is only what someone wrote down." - A. Whitney Brown "G-d cannot alter the past, but historians can." -Samuel Butler "Historian: an unsuccessful novellist." -H.L. Mencken "History is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind." -Edward Gibbon "History is mostly guessing; the rest is prejudice." -Will and Ariel Durant "Happy the people whose annals are blank in history books!" -Thomas Carlyle "History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which i am trying to awake." -James Joyce Source: Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Plunges Into History |
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