Titon Rahmawan quote: “History and the past should be a mirror for us to reflect on our own ugliness, shortcomings and depravity. Not just to …”

“I think the world is like a great mirror, and reflects our lives just as we ourselves look upon it.”

L. Frank Baum (1856–1919) Children's writer, editor, journalist, screenwriter

Aunt Jane’s Nieces and Uncle John (1911)
Novels published under the pseudonym Edith van Dyne
Context: I think the world is like a great mirror, and reflects our lives just as we ourselves look upon it. Those who turn sad faces toward the world find only sadness reflected. But a smile is reflected in the same way, and cheers and brightens our hearts. You think there is no pleasure to be had in life. That is because you are heartsick and — and tired, as you say. With one sad story ended you are afraid to begin another — a sequel — feeling it would be equally sad. But why should it be? Isn't the joy or sorrow equally divided in life?

“In our society, we don not study history to understand the process of change but just to entertain ourselves with past events. For this reason, history is not regarded as a useful subject. The history that we teach in our educational institutions is political history and, as such, it is used by the ruling classes.”

Mubarak Ali (1941) Historian, activist, scholar

In the Shadow of History, Chapter: Why should we study History? p. 4
History, What History Tells Us, In the Shadow of History

“Holy Scripture presents a kind of mirror to the eyes of the mind, so that our inner face may be seen in it. There we learn our own ugliness, there our own beauty.”

Pope Gregory I (540–604) Pope from 590 to 604

Morals in the Book of Job, 553d, as translated in Cultural Performances in Medieval France (2007), p. 129
Original: (la) Scriptura sacra mentis oculis quasi quoddam speculum opponitur, ut interna nostra facies in ipsa videatur. Ibi etenim foeda, ibi pulchra nostra cognoscimus.

“Mirrors should reflect before sending an image.”

Jean-Luc Godard (1930) French-Swiss film director, screenwriter and film critic

“Mirrors should think longer before they reflect.”

Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager and filmmaker

“We are as ugly as animals in our fashion, and unless we deal with the ugliness in ourselves, unless we deal with the violence in ourselves, the brutality in ourselves, and find some way to sublimate it, just to use Freud's term, into something slightly higher, we're never going to get anywhere with anything.”

Norman Mailer (1923–2007) American novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, film maker, actor and political candidate

Interview for French TV (1998)

“If history moves forward, knowledge of it travels backwards, so that in writing of our own recent past we are continually meeting ourselves coming the other way.”

Terry Eagleton (1943) British writer, academic and educator

Afterword, p. 190
1980s, Literary Theory: An Introduction (1983)

“The past reflects eternally between two mirrors -the bright mirror of words and deeds, and the dark one, full of things we didn't do or say.”

Gregory David Roberts book Shantaram

Source: Shantaram

“What we are doing to the forests of the world is but a mirror reflection of what we are doing to ourselves and to one another.”

Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) pre-eminent leader of Indian nationalism during British-ruled India

Earliest instance of this quote found on google books is the 1989 book Forest primeval: the natural history of an ancient forest by Chris Maser, but there it appears to be Maser's own thought (see p. 230 http://books.google.com/books?id=8EAHQM54E5gC&q=%a+mirror% followed by a different supposed Gandhi quote http://books.google.com/books?id=8EAHQM54E5gC&q=gandhi).
Disputed

“We are free falling backward through time, reincarnating ourselves from our past, reflecting the chaotic energy of the present.”

Lorin Morgan-Richards (1975) American poet, cartoonist, and children's writer

As quoted in the Sunday Mail, Glasgow.

“History and the past should be a mirror for us to reflect on our own ugliness, shortcomings and depravity. Not just to preen and beautify ourselves.”

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