A Quote by Annie Leonard

I think history has less of an impact on current times than the stories that we tell ourselves about that history [do].

Annie Leonard

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About Current History Impact Less Ourselves Stories Tell Than Think Times

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Annie Leonard
Born: 1964

Symbols give us our identity, our self image, our way of explaining ourselves to ourselves and to others. Symbols in turn determine the kinds of stories we tell, and the stories we tell determine the kind of history we make and remake.

Mary Robinson

I don't necessarily think stories have functions any more than diamonds have functions, or the sky has a function... Stories exist. They keep us sane, I think. We tell each other stories, we believe stories. I love watching the slow rise of the urban legend. They're the stories that we use to explain ourselves to ourselves.

Neil Gaiman

I don’t know much about history, and I wouldn’t give a nickel for all the history in the world. It means nothing to me. History is more or less bunk. It's tradition. We don't want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker's damn is the history we make today.

Henry Ford

There are times throughout history and it doesn't take long for either an American or a German, to think about times in the history of their country where the law provided the Government to do things which were not right.

Edward Snowden

I think we fool ourselves and really negate a great deal of history if we think that the oral history of poetry is shorter than the written history of poetry. It's not true. Poetry has a longer oral tradition than it does written

Saul Williams

Black history isn’t a separate history. This is all of our history, this is American history, and we need to understand that. It has such an impact on kids and their values and how they view black people.

Karyn Parsons

I've always loved history, from my youngest memories. My father enjoyed the great stories of history, like Hereward the Wake, Robin Hood, and Richard the Lionheart, and he shared them with me. I went on to do a degree in history, though I found it rather dry, because it was mostly about politics rather than dashing individuals!

Jo Beverley

We shall not understand the history of men and other times unless we ourselves are alive to the requirements which that history satisfied.

Benedetto Croce

For me, as a documentary filmmaker, I'm interested in telling stories of real people whose experiences tell us something about ourselves or our history, or who we are and our potential.

Kristi Jacobson

We're all just in the muck trying to believe we're capable of greatness, but closer to breaking than we want to admit. And we tell ourselves stories-about ourselves,but maybe also all these stories about other people, about characters-as a way to hide from how small we are.

Doug Dorst

I feel history is more of a story than a lesson. I know this idea of presentism: this idea of constantly evoking the past to justify the present moment. A lot of people will tell you, "history is how we got here." And learning from the lessons of history. But that's imperfect. If you learn from history you can do things for all the wrong reasons.

Sarnath Banerjee

It has been said, "History is written by the victors." I take this to mean we can make ourselves victorious by writing, and then rewriting our own stories. In a country and culture so dominated by media, by the manipulation of words and stories, telling the tales of people whose stories historically have not been told is a radical act and I believe an act that can change the world and help rewrite history.

Jennifer Beals

I love telling stories. I think of myself as a storyteller, and I don't feel bound by being just a singer or an actress. First, I'm a storyteller, and history is stories - the most compelling stories. There is a lot you can find out about yourself through knowing about history. I have always been attracted to things that are old. I have just always found such things interesting and compelling.

Zooey Deschanel

History is the fiction we invent to persuade ourselves that events are knowable and that life has order and direction. That's why events are always reinterpreted when values change. We need new versions of history to allow for our current prejudices.

Bill Watterson

The thing that has made the so-called Negro in America fail, more than any other thing, is your, my, lack of knowledge concerning history. We know less about history than anything else.

Malcolm X

A Quote by Annie Leonard

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