“Americans treat history like a cookbook. Whenever they are uncertain what to do next, they turn to history and look up the proper recipe, invariably designated "the lesson of history."”

—  Russell Baker

"All Right, Jerry, Drop the Cookbook" (p.47)
So This Is Depravity (1980)

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

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Americans treat history like a cookbook. Whenever they are uncertain what to do next, they turn to history and look up …" by Russell Baker?
Russell Baker photo
Russell Baker 40
writer and satirst from the United States 1925–2019

Related quotes

Aldous Huxley photo

“That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach.”

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer

Source: " A Case of Voluntary Ignorance http://www.christiebooks.com/ChristieBooksWP/2013/11/a-case-of-voluntary-ignorance-by-aldous-huxley/" in Collected Essays (1959)

Anthony Doerr photo

“You know the greatest lesson of history? It's that history is whatever the victors say it is. That's the lesson. Whoever wins, that's who decides the history.”

Anthony Doerr book All the Light We Cannot See

Source: All the Light We Cannot See

Gustavo Gutiérrez photo

“Human history is in truth nothing but the history of the slow, uncertain, and surprising fulfillment of the Promise.”

Gustavo Gutiérrez (1928) Peruvian theologian

Source: A Theology of Liberation - 15th Anniversary Edition, Chapter Nine, Liberation And Salvation, p. 91-92

Harper Lee photo

“As sure as time, history is repeating itself, and as sure as man is man, history is the last place he’ll look for his lessons.”

Harper Lee book Go Set a Watchman

Source: Go Set a Watchman

John W. Gardner photo

“History never looks like history when you are living through it.”

John W. Gardner (1912–2002) American politician

Quoted in Rhoda Thomas Tripp, The International Thesaurus of Quotations (1970), p. 280.

“The so-called lessons of history are for the most part the rationalizations of the victors. History is written by the survivors.”

Max Lerner (1902–1992) American journalist and educator

It Is Later Than You Think: The Need for a Militant Democracy http://books.google.com/books?id=szVGoBq-dkEC&q=%22actually+The+so-called+lessons+of+history+are+for+the+most+part+the+rationalizations+of+the+victors+history+is+written+by+the+survivors%22&pg=PA255#v=onepage (1939)

Steven Erikson photo

“The lesson of history is that no one learns.”

Steven Erikson book Deadhouse Gates

Source: Deadhouse Gates

Bobby Fischer photo

“Look at the history of the (United States). The history of the country is basically what? Get something for nothing, right? Take, kill. They invaded the country, they robbed the land of the American Indians, they killed almost all of them off… That's the history of the United States. A despicable country.”

Bobby Fischer (1943–2008) American chess prodigy, chess player, and chess writer

Radio Interview, September 11 2001 http://www.geocities.jp/bobbby_b/mp3/F_19_1.MP3
2000s

Taylor Caldwell photo

“It is a stern fact of history that no nation that rushed to the abyss ever turned back. Not ever, in the long history of the world. We are now on the edge of the abyss. Can we, for the first time in history, turn back? It is up to you.”

Taylor Caldwell (1900–1985) Novelist

"Honoria" (1957); republished in The New American, Vol. 19, No. 20, (6 October 2003)
1950s

Morgan Freeman photo

“You're going to relegate my history to a month? I don't want a black history month. Black history is American history.”

Morgan Freeman (1937) American actor, film director, and narrator

Related topics