Norman Davies Zitate auf Englisch

Zitat des Tages von Norman Davies:

Capacity of human societies both to absorb and to discard cultures is much underestimated.

Traditionally, historians thought in terms of invasions: the Celts took over the islands, then the Romans, then the Anglo-Saxons. It now seems much more likely that the resident population doesn't change as much as thought. The people stay put but are reculturalized by some new dominant culture.

Norman Davies

Every austerity measure that Cameron and George Osborne make is being presented in Scotland as the English starving us.

Norman Davies

So long as classical education and classical prejudices prevailed, educated Englishmen inevitably saw ancient Britain as an alien land.

Norman Davies

In 1945, when the Second World War technically ends in Poland, the incoming Soviet army liberates some groups of people but begins to oppress the general population, in some ways more harshly than it had happened before.

Norman Davies

One of the few things that can be said for certain about Europe's prehistoric peoples is that they all came from somewhere else.

Norman Davies

The last years of fading communism provided an ideal environment for Poland's Catholic Church, which acted as an umbrella for dissenters of all sorts.

Norman Davies

Poland is the natural bridge between East and West.

Norman Davies

People don't see very often their death coming... Look at the French Revolution: The king of France was thinking in the 1780s, 'We're doing rather better than my father in the 1770s.'

Norman Davies

Historical change is like an avalanche. The starting point is a snow-covered mountainside that looks solid. All changes take place under the surface and are rather invisible.

Norman Davies

The Law and Justice government does not want a bunch of foreign historians to decide what goes on in 'their' museum.

Norman Davies

I wanted to produce a book that would demonstrate not only the rich diversity of people who answered to Anders's command but also the extraordinary variety of their experiences and emotions: from death to despair, fear and longings and eventually to hope.

Norman Davies

Nearly all interested parties think I write too shortly on the subjects that interest them most.

Norman Davies

I always needle a bit when people say I'm a champion of the Poles, because I've always had a very multinational view of Poland.

Norman Davies

The 'politics of memory' policy appears to work largely by insinuation.

Norman Davies

I first came across the Anders Army story by accident. When I first went to live in Oxford in the 1960s, I discovered that some of my close neighbours had been on the Anders trail.

Norman Davies

A bad historian is even more dangerous than dead documentary wood.

Norman Davies

Northern Ireland must, in future, be absorbed into the Irish republic. Wales and Scotland must advance from devolution to full independent status. The four nations of these islands must commit themselves absolutely to the project of a United Europe.

Norman Davies

States seem to have a natural life cycle, and anything can occur to change them into something else, and that something might be no bad thing.

Norman Davies

I first heard of General Anders and his army more than 50 years ago. I admired him then, and I admire him still; and I feel a special bond with the men, women and children whom he rescued from hunger, disease, and official abuse. Theirs is a story of endurance and fortitude that gives one faith in the human spirit.

Norman Davies

Europe's fragmentation puts the wider historical picture beyond reach.

Norman Davies

The Black Sea is Eastern Europe's counterpart to the Mediterranean.

Norman Davies

History must give the Poles the principal credit for bringing the Soviet bloc to its knees.

Norman Davies

The most noticeable thing about the Soviet collapse was that it followed a natural course.

Norman Davies

Under Lenin, hardly less than under Stalin, historians harbored critical opinions at their peril. The writing, let alone the publication, of political diaries was virtually impossible.

Norman Davies

In the long run, Europe will certainly move toward unification. But it will be a process of push and pull, and there will be resistance.

Norman Davies

I don't see why a book shouldn't be intellectually sound, entertaining, and fun to read. Historians who write academic history, which is unreadable, are basically wasting their time.

Norman Davies

It's our vanity that makes us think that what forms part of our world today must be stable and secure.

Norman Davies

The question is whether a confident Europe will be a rival for North America - or whether they will work together and become a more unified bloc.

Norman Davies

One of the problems in the Ukrainian crisis is that very few Westerners know their history, or if they know it, what they learn is what we call the Russian version of history.

Norman Davies

It's the historian's job not to ridicule the myths, but to show the difference between myth and reality.

Norman Davies

All political institutions will end sooner or later. The question is when and how.

Norman Davies

None of Europe's modern nations are genuinely native.

Norman Davies

Capacity of human societies both to absorb and to discard cultures is much underestimated.

Norman Davies

Myth-making is absolutely necessary to create the simplified images that people live off.

Norman Davies