Paul Farmer Quotes

The history of the world, as it is written and handed down by word of mouth, often fails us completely; but man's intuitive capacity, though it often misleads, does lead, does not ever abandon one.

The historian is, by definition, absolutely incapable of observing the facts which he examines.

People don't know the past, even though we live in literate societies, because they don't trust the sources of the past.

We should burn all libraries and allow to remain only that which everyone knows by heart. A beautiful age of the legend would then begin.

Legends are material to be moulded, and not facts to be recorded.

The past actually happened but history is only what someone wrote down.

Time is what allows stories to spread into people's consciousness.

There can't be a pure myth, especially when the myth has been handed down in the oral tradition. As the stories are told, they change. If the stories don't change they just die.

It is important to tell good stories. You can tell stories even if they are not huge, epic, and wonderful. You can still take the responsibility for being a scribe of your tribe.

I come from a big family of storytellers and, growing up, I liked hearing about the years before I was born.

Storytelling is important. Part of human continuity.

All the great history has been written with passion …. Fiction is history from below.

History is nothing but assisted and recorded memory. It might almost be said to be no science at all

History is merely gossip.

History is a distillation of rumor.

It is impossible to write ancient history because we do not have enough sources, and impossible to write modern history because we have far too many.

We often do not get the first draft of history right.

Stories are one of the means by which a culture preserves its identity.

History is obviously dependent on the evidence, and it's always amazing to me how much evidence there is.

History is like Santa Claus: a language construction. We have some registers about the existence of Santa and history - the presents under the tree, the archives - but none have really seen them.

The books that I'm writing, you can write them only when you're amongst your people. You're not going to find it on the Internet. You're not going to hear it there.

A bad historian is even more dangerous than dead documentary wood.

In history there's what's written down and there's what actually happened.

Without oblivion, there is no remembrance possible. When both oblivion and memory are wise, when the general soul of man is clear, melodious, true, there may come a modern Iliad as memorial of the Past.

All we know about Jesus is what someone else wrote down... so really one should say, "Here is what someone wrote down that they said Jesus said..." this isn't uncertainty on purpose, just plain speaking.