“A people's memory is history; and as a man without a memory, so a people without a history cannot grow wiser, better.”
Vegn Geshichte, 1890. Alle Verk, xii. 35.
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Isaac Leib Peretz 61
Yiddish language author and playwright 1852–1915Related quotes
Source: The Light of Other Days (2000), Chapter 19
Source: A People's History of the United States
“History is nothing but assisted and recorded memory.”
Source: The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress (1905-1906), Vol. V, Reason in Science, Ch. 2 "History"
Context: History is nothing but assisted and recorded memory. It might almost be said to be no science at all, if memory and faith in memory were not what science necessarily rest on. In order to sift evidence we must rely on some witness, and we must trust experience before we proceed to expand it. The line between what is known scientifically and what has to be assumed in order to support knowledge is impossible to draw. Memory itself is an internal rumour; and when to this hearsay within the mind we add the falsified echoes that reach us from others, we have but a shifting and unseizable basis to build upon. The picture we frame of the past changes continually and grows every day less similar to the original experience which it purports to describe.
As state president, referring to the ruling National Party House of Assembly, 17 August 1987, as cited in PW Botha in his own words, Pieter-Dirk Uys, 1987, p. 28
“History is the ship carrying living memories to the future.”
As quoted in Peter's Quotations : Ideas for Our Times (1993) by Laurence J. Peter, p. 247
“As fish cannot live without water, so guerrillas cannot live without the people.”
With the century, vol. 5
In a speech to the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, 12/8/09: On the duties of artists.
“Among us today a concentration of private power without equal in history is growing.”
Simple Truths message to Congress http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article12058.htm (April 29, 1938). http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=15637 http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,759590,00.html
1930s
Context: Unhappy events abroad have retaught us two simple truths about the liberty of a democratic people. The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic State itself. That, in its essence, is fascism — ownership of government by an individual, by a group or by any other controlling private power.
The second truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if its business system does not provide employment and produce and distribute goods in such a way as to sustain an acceptable standard of living. Both lessons hit home. Among us today a concentration of private power without equal in history is growing.