A Quote by A. J. P. Taylor

History is not another name for the past, as many people imply. It is the name for stories about the past.

A. J. P. Taylor

Quote Topics

About Another History Imply Many Name Past People Stories

Quote Author

A. J. P. Taylor
British - Historian
March 25, 1906 - September 7, 1990

I love my people's history. I feel a huge responsibility to tell the stories of my past and my ancestors' past.

Lynn Nottage

History is not the past. It is the stories we tell about the past. How we tell these stories - triumphantly or self-critically, metaphysically or dialectally - has a lot to do with whether we cut short or advance our evolution as human beings.

Grace Lee Boggs

Kunta Kinte's strength derives from the knowledge of where he comes from, but it struck me that I don't know where I come from. I understand that my last name is Kirby, that I was born in London, third-generation Jamaican, and at some point along the line, that name was changed. I didn't know my history past my grandparents.

Malachi Kirby

Past violence is detrimental to our present action, and it is not in the name of principles that we denounce it, but in the name of efficiency.

Pierre Bourgault

The past after all is only another name for someone else's present.

David McCullough

For those of us with an inward turn of mind, which is another name for melancholy introspection, the beginning of a new year inevitably leads to thoughts about both the future and the past.

Michael Dirda

My first memory was of stories about the past - a past that, according to the storytellers, was superior in every way to the life then being lived. It didn't take me long, however, to understand that the present was all we had, for the past was gone, and nothing could be done about it.

Horton Foote

David Holdaway was my stage name. I was an actor for about eight years in the '90s. I had to change my name because there was another David Nicholls, and I thought if I changed it to my mother's name, she'd be touched.

David Nicholls

As with the Trojans or the Tudors, there are many evergreen stories that we come back to again and again. I think history documentaries are as much about the present as they are the past.

Lucy Worsley

Also, what mountains of dead ashes, wreck and burnt bones, does assiduous pedantry dig up from the past time and name it History.

Thomas Carlyle

To holy people the very name of Jesus is a name to feed upon, a name to transport. His name can raise the dead and transfigure and beautify the living.

John Henry Newman

The accounts that history presents have to be paid. Past has to be reconciled with present in the life of a nation. History is an insistent force: the past is what put us where we are. the past cannot be put behind until it is settled with.

William Pfaff

History in Burckhardt's words is 'the record of what one age finds worthy of note in another.' The past is intelligible to us only in light of the present; and we can fully understand the present only in light of the past. To enable man to understand the society of the past and to increase his mastery over the society of the present is the dual function of history.

Edward Hallett Carr

A name is so important. A surname connects you to your past, to your family. Even a given name has meaning - why did your parents pick that particular one?

Kelley Armstrong

Rama is a fairly common name in India. It symbolizes an individual who is interested both in enlightenment and martial arts. I do not claim to have any past life connection with the historical Rama. It's just a name I liked.