Neil Gaiman Quotes

A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots.

All the things that are part of your heritage make you British - that makes this country what it is. It's part of your history. And here, unlike America, it's still living history.

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.

We, as Americans, at least - I mean, I love my country - but we're so self-righteous sometimes, in terms of, like, our nationality, our country. But we're people from somewhere else; the true 'Americans' are the original peoples. It's funny, but we're a very territorial species.

In a continent but recently settled, many parts of which have as yet little historical or cultural background, the material for this volume has been gathered from a section that was one of the first to be colonized.

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

People tend to forget that in our country, we'd pretty much all be immigrants, except for the Native Americans.

We moved, and there was a golden era in the '40s when we were so conscious of who we were as Australians.

Language also encodes our past. We want to know who we are. To know who we are, we have to know who we used to be. Consequently, our literature, written in the past, anchors us in that past.

Everyone who's born in the Western Hemisphere is a Native American. We are all Native Americans.

History is the interpretation of the significance that the past has for us.

American history is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful, and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it.

I don't think you can separate a place from its history. I think a place is much more than the bricks and mortar that go into its construction. I think it's more than the accidental topography of the ground it stands on.

We examine and highlight the history of the African descendants in America, and know that each and every one of us has come this far because of our faith in this country.

Europe was created by history. America was created by philosophy.

Americans think that they have a history, but it's nothing compared to Europe.

I don't think all buildings have to be iconic, but the history of the world has shown us that cultures build iconic buildings for their major public buildings.

I really feel sorry for kids who aren't interested in history - recent history, either, because it is this that made us what we are.

A poem I write is not just about me; it is about national identity, not just regional but national, the history of people in relation to other people. I reach for these outward stories to make sense of my own life, and how my story intersects with a larger public history.

We are not America. We are Afghanistan.

Here, we tell the story: why the people came here, what they did when they got here, going back to the Native Americans and coming all the way forward.

Racial history is therefore natural history and the mysticism of the soul at one and the same time; but the history of the religion of the blood, conversely, is the great world story of the rise and downfall of peoples, their heroes and thinkers, their inventors and artists.

The American landscape has no foreground and the American mind no background.

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

It may not be art, but it is history.