Norman Davies quotes - page 2

Why are some things remembered and others forgotten? That is the theme I want to pursue about the Second World War. (Norman Davies)
A bad historian is even more dangerous than dead documentary wood. View quote
Norman Davies
Our mental maps are distorted by who are the 'winners' of history and who are the powers of today. View quote
Norman Davies
Why does a state last a thousand years? Why not 999? Why not a thousand and one? What are the events that finally bring the whole thing down? That is what I am asking. View quote
Norman Davies
Myth-making is absolutely necessary to create the simplified images that people live off. View quote
Norman Davies
The shores of the Black Sea lend themselves to the literary genre that may be classified as 'cultural pilgrimage,' which is not just a higher form of travel writing but which has the further mission of reporting on present conditions and supplying neglected knowledge. View quote
Norman Davies
One might have thought that 70 years was time enough to work out what really happened in 1939. It isn't the case. Misunderstandings and misinformation abound. View quote
Norman Davies
It's our vanity that makes us think that what forms part of our world today must be stable and secure. View quote
Norman Davies
All states and nations, however great, bloom for a season and are replaced. View quote
Norman Davies
Young people have to learn in a cocoon filled with false optimism. Unlike their parents and grandparents, they grow up with very little sense of the pitiless passage of time. View quote
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)
So long as classical education and classical prejudices prevailed, educated Englishmen inevitably saw ancient Britain as an alien land. View quote
Norman Davies
The United Kingdom is not, and never has been, a nation state. View quote
Norman Davies
Poland in the 1990s saw a surge of unrestrained, American-style capitalism. With millions of Poles living in the U.S.A., the defeat of communism led many to aim for a lifestyle derivative of Chicago or Detroit. View quote
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. View quote
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. View quote
Norman Davies
Europe's fragmentation puts the wider historical picture beyond reach. View quote
Norman Davies
In the 21st century, there will probably be a reflex against the disintegration of traditional European culture. What started as a reaction will come full circle, and there will be a return to the roots. View quote
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. View quote
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. View quote
Norman Davies
The Russian myths of the Second World War are still intact. (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. View quote
Norman Davies
There is a real danger of the United Kingdom breaking up. There is a loss of common identity. View quote
Norman Davies
It's unimaginable to meet a Pole or a German who does not know about the history of their country. But lots of English people don't know the difference between Britain and England. View quote
Norman Davies
I do belong to the club which doesn't see a distinction between academic history and popular history. View quote
Norman Davies