“Historians are left forever chasing shadows, painfully aware of their inability ever to reconstruct a dead world in its completeness however thorough or revealing their documentation. We are doomed to be forever hailing someone who has just gone around the corner and out of earshot.”

—  Simon Schama

Dead Certainties (Unwarranted Speculations) p. 320 (1991)

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 "Historians are left forever chasing shadows, painfully aware of their inability ever to reconstruct a dead world in its…" by Simon Schama?
Simon Schama photo
Simon Schama 1
British historian 1945

Related quotes

Cassandra Clare photo
Ray Bradbury photo
Matvei Zakharov photo

“The time when Russia could be kept out of the world's oceans has gone forever. We shall sail all the world's seas; no force on earth can prevent us.”

Matvei Zakharov (1898–1972) Soviet military commander

Quoted in "Soviet Russia and the Middle East" - Page 46 - by Aaron S. Klieman - 1970

George W. Bush photo
Bode Miller photo

“Anyone who isn’t strong is left in a corner, no one asks for their autograph, they are abandoned in the cold shadows. Those who win, however, become icons.”

Bode Miller (1977) American alpine ski racer

Interview with Gazzetta dello Sport, 16 Feb. 2006 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11385083/

Franklin D. Roosevelt photo

“That superiority has gone — forever.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) 32nd President of the United States

(British Pathé newsreel · They're Going To Get It - Roosevelt (1943) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_V6tL6QRQs)
1940s, State of the Union Address (1943)
Context: I cannot tell you when or where the United Nations are going to strike next in Europe. But we are going to strike — and strike hard. I cannot tell you whether we are going to hit them in Norway, or through the Low Countries, or in France, or through Sardinia or Sicily, or through the Balkans, or through Poland — or at several points simultaneously. But I can tell you that no matter where and when we strike by land, we and the British and the Russians will hit them from the air heavily and relentlessly. Day in and day out we shall heap tons upon tons of high explosives on their war factories and utilities and seaports.
Hitler and Mussolini will understand now the enormity of their miscalculations — that the Nazis would always have the advantage of superior air power as they did when they bombed Warsaw, and Rotterdam, and London and Coventry. That superiority has gone — forever.
Yes, we believe that the Nazis and the Fascists have asked for it — and they are going to get it.

Josephs Quartzy photo

“It takes a few days to complete cycling the world,
but it takes forever to understand its ways”

Josephs Quartzy (1999) Tanzanian actor

Source: Sweetest song I know

Related topics