Robert Christgau Quotes

Poles must understand history but we must also overcome it if it is obstructing our contemporary goals.

In my generation, history was taught in terms of grand figures, men on whom the destiny of the nation hinged, quintessential heroes.

I think that America has an obsession with history, really.

I don't think the British carry a historical consciousness either.

One of the things that really bothers me is that Americans don't have any sense of history. The majority of Americans don't have any idea of where we've come from, so they naturally succumb to the kind of cliche version that Ronald Reagan represented.

I think people in general have neglected to learn about history.

Most of us get our history through story.

For a country is not merely a piece of earth; it is, above all, a compendium of social, cultural, and historical factors which begin to acquire sense and order through the process of writing.

I don't think you should ever run from history. You should learn from it and embrace it.

History isn’t just what happened before we came on the scene. We are a part of history..

Nothing is so retentive as a nation's memory.

History is an instrument of the most genuine patriotic spirit

History is not the story of strangers, aliens from another realm; it is the story of us had we been born a little earlier. History is memory; we have to remember what it is like to be a Roman, or a Jacobite or a Chartist or even - if we dare, and we should dare - a Nazi. History is not abstraction, it is the enemy of abstraction.

A nation is a body of people who have done great things together.

History is one of those marvelous and necessary illusions we have to deal with. It's one of the ways of dealing with our world with impossible generalities which we couldn't live without.

Most of us, I think, are conscious of history swirling around outside the door, but when we're in the house, we're usually not dealing with history. We're not thinking about history.

I think history is collective memories. In writing, I'm using my own memory, and I'm using my collective memory.

Let us not suffer from a national amnesia that causes us to forget who and what we are.

You cannot not know history.

An accurate knowledge of the past of a country is necessary for everyone who would understand its present, and who desires to judge of its future.

A nation's life is about as long as its reverential memory.

With each passing decade, history becomes less real for us, less immediate and essential to our way of life, and so, like 'green' nature, more of a commodity or an advertising gimmick.

Here's an idea: How about just 'Americans?' That has a nice ring to it, if you ask me. Placing undue emphasis on our 'separateness' is a step backward. Bring back the melting pot.

But we cannot rely on memorials and museums alone. We can tell ourselves we will never forget and we likely won't. But we need to make sure that we teach history to those who never had the opportunity to remember in the first place.

Nations without a past are contradictions in terms. What makes a nation is the past, what justifies one nation against others is the past, and historians are the people who produce it.