“People never stop to think about these basic facts when they watch wars and cop shows on the television. People take too much for granted. Each time a gun is fired the whole history of engineering comes into play. Of politics, too: war, assassination, revolution, terror. Guns aren't just history's props and agents: they're history itself, spinning alternate futures in their chamber, hurling the present from their barrel, casting aside the empty shells of the past.”

— Tom McCarthy (writer) , book Déjà vu

Source: Remainder (2005), Ch. 11.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Tom McCarthy (writer) 8

British writer 1969

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The Opening to the Future http://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/ag/legacy/2011/01/20/06-08-1964.pdf (1964)
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the freedom of man and of nations — could never have been the origin of two world wars. These latter were brought about by fate, which exercises its power owing to the weakness and decline of freedom and of the creative spirit of man. Almost all contemporary political ideologies, with their characteristic tendency to state-idolatry, are likewise largely a product of two world wars, begotten as they are of the inexorability's of fate.
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“From time immemorial, people have talked about peace without achieving it. Do we simply lack enough experience? Though we talk peace, we wage war. Sometimes we even wage war in the name of peace.. . . War may be too much a part of history to be eliminated—ever.”

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Source: The 25-Year War: America's Military Role in Vietnam (1984), p. 209

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Tom McCarthy (writer) 8

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