A Quote by Ed Koch

Should we be rewriting history just to make people feel good? That's not history, that's psychiatry.

Ed Koch

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Feel Feel Good Good History Just Make People Psychiatry Rewriting Rewriting History Should Writing History

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Ed Koch
American - Politician
December 12, 1924 - February 1, 2013

There's a lot we should be able to learn from history. And yet history proves that we never do. In fact, the main lesson of history is that we never learn the lessons of history. This makes us look so stupid that few people care to read it. They'd rather not be reminded. Any good history book is mainly just a long list of mistakes, complete with names and dates. It's very embarrassing.

A. Whitney Brown

History is the torch that is meant to illuminate the past, to guard us against the repetition of our mistakes of other days. We cannot join in the rewriting of history to make it conform to our comfort and convenience.

Claude Bowers

The antidote to feel-good history is not feel-bad history but honest and inclusive history.

James W. Loewen

That rewriting of literary history is most obvious in the case of The Yage Letters, where I was able to show that the true history inverts the official one.

Oliver Harris

Won't it be wonderful when black history and native American history and Jewish history and all of U.S. history is taught from one book. Just U.S. history.

Maya Angelou

There's a lot going on in the world that's very disturbing: rewriting the Holocaust; pseudo-historians rewriting history itself. And we're dealing with a terrorist mentality that involves whole nations.

Joel Grey

People who make history know nothing about history. You can see that in the sort of history they make.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

All other forms of history - economic history, social history, psychological history, above all sociology - seem to me history with the history left out.

A. J. P. Taylor

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

The history of art is not just the history of artists; it is also the history of the people who viewed art. And that wider perspective can help us see some of the reasons why the art of the ancient world should still matter to us.

Mary Beard

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's great to have a great past and history. But it's even greater to have a good future. So the most important history is the history we make today.

Joe Kaeser

History should not be written to make the present generation feel good but to remind us that human affairs are complicated.

Margaret MacMillan

I was always pretty interested in my history. Not just the history of the Caribbean, the history of my people, but all walks of life.

Viv Richards

The Chinese government wants me to say that for many centuries Tibet has been part of China. Even if I make that statement, many people would just laugh. And my statement will not change past history. History is history.

Dalai Lama

Do not feel trapped by the facts of your history. Your history is not some set of sacred facts. History is an interpretation, and your history is yours to interpret. To know the history and then reinterpret it gives you additional depth.

Harriet Rubin

A Quote by Ed Koch

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