Spiritual Quote of the Day (Dr. Michael Chan, on Moses, Truth, and National Memory)

“The future of a people depends on the truthfulness of their memory. A forgetful nation is a fragile nation. Moses urged the people to remember the good, the bad and the ugly. Moses said that remembrance precedes promise. We have our own Jordan to cross. We need to reconnect with all our history to see how we got here. There is so much to celebrate, to repair and to be done.” —Dr. Michael Chan, executive director for faith and learning at Concordia College, in an address at the Chautauqua Institution in upstate New York, July 12, 2026, quoted by Mary Lee Talbot, “Quality of Our Future Dependson the Quality of Our Memory, Says Michael Chan,” The Chautauquan Daily, July 13, 2026

Quote of the Day (John Gray, on History, ‘The First Victim in Dictatorships’)

“[H]istory is the first victim in dictatorships. Because perceptions of the past constantly and inevitably impinge on contemporary debate, we depend on historians to provide us with a richness and variety of grounding. Historians should not be too complacent about their ability to do it….Then again most historians have led sheltered lives, few have gained the insights offered by actual experience of popular engagement, and inevitably most of the historical record they work with was created by the elite. Yet history without any realised sense of the experience of the underclass, or, say, of women, is only half a history….I wouldn’t suggest supernatural predictive powers for historians. In my part of the world [Northern Ireland], we know enough of the tyranny of biblical prediction to too readily adopt other formulaic certainties. What we can usefully do is to point to other possibilities in the face of any prevailing consensus. We will serve best if we engage in an endless process of exploration, of critical assessment of what has gone before, of self-criticism to the point where it is just still possible to write—to move our understanding of the human condition forward. In doing so we engage in the one inevitable feature of the process; that revisionism will always be followed by post-revisionism.”—Belfast social historian, civil-rights activist and former librarian John Gray interviewed by Peter Collins, “Gray’s Elegy,” History Ireland, Spring 1999

Quote of the Day (Arnold J. Toynbee, on How Man Achieves Civilization)

"Man achieves civilization, not as a result of superior biological endowment or geographical environment, but as a response to a challenge in a situation of special difficulty which rouses him to make a hitherto unprecedented effort."—English historian Arnold J. Toynbee (1889-1975), A Study of History: Volume I: Abridgement of Volumes I-VI (1987)

Quote of the Day (Geoffrey Parker, on the Importance of French Historian Fernand Braudel)

“The Mediterranean refashioned the entire framework of history. It showed that geography, climate, and distance—what Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie would later call ‘l’histoire immobile’—formed the essential context without which history makes no sense. The book also emphasised that the true task of the historian is to distinguish the dynamic from the static, the aberration from the trend. It is impossible to convey the excitement of that approach back in 1964. I had never considered those self-evident truths.”— Geoffrey Parker, Professor of European History at the Ohio State University, “The Transformations of Fernand Braudel,” History Today, November 2025

Forty years ago this week, French historian Fernand Braudel died at age 83. He is associated with the Annales School, an influential movement in historical writing that moved beyond the “great man” school of narrative writing to consider how material factors like water, famine, wildlife, diets, disease, trade, and violence affected ordinary people—including those he grew up with.

Braudel began working on the history that made his reputation, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, under the most extraordinary circumstances: as a prisoner of war during World War II, without access to libraries or any written records, relying initially on his great memory. In old age he produced a three-volume survey of the 15^th through 18^th centuries, Civilization and Capitalism, the capstone of his effort to create a sweeping “history from below.”

(For an excellent overview of Braudel and the Annales School, please see Daniel Halverson’s February 2016 post on the blog “The Partially Examined Life.”)

Quote of the Day (Ralph Ellison, on Americans’ ‘Limited Attention to History’)

“At best Americans give but a limited attention to history. Too much happens too rapidly, and before we can evaluate it, or exhaust its meaning or pleasure, there is something new to concern us. Ours is the tempo of the motion picture, not that of the still camera, and we waste experience as we wasted the forest.” —American novelist and essayist Ralph Ellison (1913-1994), Shadow and Act (1964)

Ours is no longer “the tempo of the motion picture,” or even the 24/7 news cycle, but instead TikTok. Fear for any nation that not only no longer remembers the past but isn’t even inclined to learn about it.

Quote of the Day (Heidi Julavits, on Historical Fiction)

“I believe it is a mistake to look to historical literary fiction if readers want to learn about history, because numerical and factual accuracy has always possessed a limited ability to tell the truth. On the flip side, this historical novelist would be foolhardy to overlook the reader’s inherent distrust of her undertaking, and should wisely limit the number of occasions for doubt. My prickly resistance to this ‘fact,’ however, is that it obscures the real challenge faced by the historical novelist. The real challenge of writing a historical literary novel is not to make your novel seem to be taking place in 1934; the challenge is to make it seem as if the story could have happened last year, or 10 years from now. Perhaps the historical literary novel would be better served by a new name: the mythic novel. This more permissive genre would seamlessly combine backward-glancing and utter fabrication, resulting in a timeless fictional truth."—American novelist, editor, and academic Heidi Julavits, “The Literary Life: Fiction 21c: History as an Occasion for Literature,” Poets and Writers, January/February 2002

The image accompanying this post, of Heidi Julavits at the 2015 Texas Book Festival in Austin, Texas, was taken Oct. 17, 2015, by Larry D. Moore.

Quote of the Day (George Washington, on Disunity and ‘Arbitrary Power’)

“It is only in our United Character, as an Empire, that our Independance is acknowledged, that our power can be regarded or our Credit supported among foreign Nations—the Treaties of the European Powers with the United States of America will have no validity on a dissolution of the Union. We shall be left nearly in a State of Nature, or we may find by our own unhappy experience, that there is a natural and necessary progression from the extreme of Anarchy to the extreme of Tyranny, and that arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of Liberty abused to Licentiousness.”—George Washington (1732-1799), commander in chief of the Continental Army and first President of the United States, “Circular to the States,” June 8-21, 1783, on the National Archives’ “Founders Online” Website

He certainly had his faults, but George Washington has long held an honored place in this country’s history for his vision, wisdom, and integrity. 

The above quote demonstrates why, as does his example of renouncing power and returning to private life when he could easily have become a dictator.

Like many Americans, I have taken for granted that important documents like the above source from our nation’s past would not only be preserved but disseminated in digital form for all of us to ponder.

The way things are going, who knows what will be maintained anymore? Oh, you hadn’t heard that the Presidential administration that came to power in January is forcing out the top leadership at the National Archives?

This is as good a time as any to remember George Orwell’s warning about history in 1984: “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”

Movie Quote of the Day (‘The Holdovers,’ on History as ‘An Explanation of the Present’)

Paul Hunham [played by Paul Giamatti] [on a “field trip” through a Boston museum with a student]: “There's nothing new in human experience, Mr. Tully. Each generation thinks it invented debauchery or suffering or rebellion, but man's every impulse and appetite from the disgusting to the sublime is on display right here all around you. So, before you dismiss something as boring or irrelevant, remember, if you truly want to understand the present or yourself, you must begin in the past. You see, history is not simply the study of the past. It is an explanation of the present.”—The Holdovers (2023), screenplay by David Hemingson, directed by Alexander Payne

Quote of the Day (Daniel Kurtz-Phelan, on National Stories and International Quarrels)

“No two countries tell the same story, even when describing the same events. One country’s glory is another country’s grievance. One’s founding myth is another’s crowning shame. In international relations, such dissonance is dangerous. Governments quarrel over what history makes rightfully theirs. Resentment over old offenses overrides powerful incentives to cooperate. Interests, threats, pride, justice—determinants of war and peace are defined by stories that never overlap exactly and often clash catastrophically. The past is never dead; it is kindling for future conflict.”—Foreign Affairs editor, diplomatic historian and George Marshall biographer Daniel Kurtz-Phelan, “The Clash of Victimizations” (review of Howard French’s “Everything Under the Heavens”), Washington Monthly, June/July/August 2017

Quote of the Day (Margaret MacMillan, on How History Cautions Us)

“History should not be asked to provide validation for political arguments in the present, or clear guidance for the future, but what it can do is caution us about taking too simple a view of the past.”— Canadian historian Margaret MacMillan, “2016 and All That,” Financial Times, July 9-10, 2016

Quote of the Day (Michael Wood, on Destroying Rivers and the Past)

“The health of our rivers is vital to everyone. If you love history, it is even more pointed, for in our landscapes are carried all our histories. Destroy a river and you also lose its past; it is akin to losing part of our collective memory. We live in times of the degradation of landscapes across the world, caused by poverty but also by the deliberate actions of the rich and powerful. And in Britain these disasters threaten not only our environment and our physical and mental wellbeing but our history, too.”— English historian, broadcaster, and documentary filmmaker Michael Wood, “Michael Wood on…The History Carried in Our Landscapes,” BBC History Magazine, April 2023

Professor Wood’s article deals with rivers in Great Britain. But these waterways—from the Hudson and Potomac in the east, through the Mississippi and Missouri in the heartland, to the Columbia in the West—have been crucial not only to American commerce but also American culture.

The Passaic River in northern New Jersey might not be as famous as these, but it has been as important to those lining its shores. This waterway has been essential to commerce in the area, but also shamefully abused, even listed in 1970 as the second most polluted river in the United States.

In September 2013 I took the image accompanying this post, of a revived tract of land on its banks: Riverfront Park in Garfield.

The creation of Riverfront Park shows what can be done with great effort in a concentrated area. Much remains to be done elsewhere along this 80-mile-long river to ensure the health of residents in the area—and the maintenance of historical memory of how the waterway helped give birth to America’s manufacturing industry.

In addition, the stream forms the backdrop to William Carlos Williams’ poem Paterson, which, the doctor-turned-writer noted, “follows the course of the Passaic River, whose life seemed more and more to resemble my own: the river above the Falls, the catastrophe of the Falls itself, the river below the Falls and the entrance at the end into the great sea."

Quote of the Day (Mstylslav Chernov, on Ukraine’s Anguish, History, and the Responsibility of Filmmakers)

“I cannot change the history. I cannot change the past. But we, all together, you—some of the most talented people in the world—we can make sure that the history record is set straight and that the truth will prevail and the people of Mariupol and those who have given their lives will never be forgotten.”— Ukrainian filmmaker Mstylslav Chernov, accepting a Best Documentary Feature Oscar for 20 Days in Mariupol, quoted by Dan Heching, “Winners, Stars Tout Peace Over Politics at ThisYear’s Academy Awards,” www.cnn.com, Mar. 11, 2024

Quote of the Day (Franklin Roosevelt, on the Three Things a Nation Must Believe In)

“A nation must believe in three things. It must believe in the past. It must believe in the future. It must, above all, believe in the capacity of its own people so to learn from the past that they can gain in judgment in creating their own future.”—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945), 32^nd President of the United States, “Remarks at the Dedication of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library at Hyde Park, New York,” June 30, 1941

Spiritual Quote of the Day (John Courtney Murray, on ‘The History Which God Makes’)

“For the Christian affirmation is that there is indeed another history, the history which God makes, and which takes place in and through the events of human history.  This history of salvation can be seen only with the eyes of faith and its external manifestation is a sign, the sacrament which is the church.  Yet this instrument of Christ’s revelation has, in cold historical fact, obscured his face and failed to proclaim his message.  This the church has done not through malice but simply because she is human.  Her members are therefore themselves in some sense unbelievers, and must share responsibility for the unbelief of the world around them.  This world in turn cannot be absolved from its own guilt, for there will always be men who freely choose to live in darkness rather than in light.  Yet what the Christian must guard against, when he and his church present themselves to the world in which they live, is that this world should not encounter in them that portion of darkness which is theirs.  This we all pray for, that the light which is Christ may break through our darkness, and that contemporary unbelief may find in the church a sacrament of Christian faith.”—American Roman Catholic theologian Fr. John Courtney Murray (1904-1967), “The Unbelief Of The Christian,” originally published in The Presence and Absence of God (1969), republished in American Sermons: The Pilgrims to Martin Luther King Jr., edited by Michael Warner (1999)

Quote of the Day (H. G. Wells, on Peace and a Sense of History)

“The need for a common knowledge of the general facts of human history throughout the world has become very evident during the tragic happenings of the last few years. Swifter means of communication have brought all men closer to one another for good or for evil. War becomes a universal disaster, blind and monstrously destructive; it bombs the baby in its cradle and sinks the food-ships that cater for the non-combatant and the neutral. There can be no peace now, we realize, but a common peace in all the world; no prosperity but a general prosperity. But there can be no common peace and prosperity without common historical ideas. Without such ideas to hold them together in harmonious co-operation, with nothing but narrow, selfish, and conflicting nationalist traditions, races and peoples are bound to drift towards conflict and destruction. This truth, which was apparent to that great philosopher Kant a century or more ago — it is the gist of his tract upon universal peace — is now plain to the man in the street. Our internal policies and our economic and social ideas are profoundly vitiated at present by wrong and fantastic ideas of the origin and historical relationship of social classes. A sense of history as the common adventure of all mankind is as necessary for peace within as it is for peace between the nations.”—English science-fiction author H. G. Wells (1866-1946), The Outline of History: Being a Plain History of Life and Mankind (1920)

Quote of the Day (James Baldwin, on ‘An Invented Past’)

“To accept one's past—one's history—is not the same thing as drowning in it; it is learning how to use it. An invented past can never be used; it cracks and crumbles under the pressures of life like clay in a season of drought.” — African-American novelist-essayist James Baldwin (1924-1987), The Fire Next Time (1963)

Quote of the Day (Simon Sebag Montefiore, on ‘Our Capacity to Create and Love’)

“The harshness of humanity has been constantly rescued by our capacity to create and love. Our limitless ability to destroy is matched only by our ingenious ability to recover.”—British historian Simon Sebag Montefiore, The World: A Family History of Humanity (2023)

The picture accompanying this post, showing Simon Sebag Montefiore at the literary festival "Oslo bokfestival 2011" presenting his book on Jerusalem, was taken Sept. 18, 2011, by Einarspetz.

Quote of the Day (George Orwell, on Totalitarianism and ‘The Continuous Alteration of the Past’)

“From the totalitarian point of view history is something to be created rather than learned. A totalitarian state is in effect a theocracy, and its ruling caste, in order to keep its position, has to be thought of as infallible. But since, in practice, no one is infallible, it is frequently necessary to rearrange past events in order to show that this or that mistake was not made, or that this or that imaginary triumph actually happened. Then again, every major change in policy demands a corresponding change of doctrine and a revelation of prominent historical figures. This kind of thing happens everywhere, but is clearly likelier to lead to outright falsification in societies where only one opinion is permissible at any given moment. Totalitarianism demands, in fact, the continuous alteration of the past, and in the long run probably demands a disbelief in the very existence of objective truth.”—English novelist and essayist Eric Blair, aka George Orwell (1903-1950), “Books v. Cigarettes,” originally published in 1946, later reprinted in Essays (Everyman Library, 2002)

George Orwell wrote these words with two totalitarian rulers in mind: Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin. Hitler’s dream of a thousand-year Reich crumbled at the end of WWII, and the Soviet Union that Stalin turned into a superpower collapsed from within more than 40 years later.

But Vladimir Putin has learned the lesson these two dictators taught about using fake history to control the present moment. He exploited fear and resentment over the loss of national power to manipulate his people.

Lucian Kim’s March 2022 article for the Wilson Center explored Putin’s “dangerous hobby”: a grasp of history “highly selective and distorted by politics” (a blueprint for control, I might add, that is increasingly envied, if not emulated, by Western proto-strongmen). Kim’s analysis of the Russian leader’s obsession with the wrong lessons of the past is best summed up with respect to Ukraine:

“If Russians are not allowed to condemn past crimes committed in their name, they will not be able to liberate themselves from the Soviet mindset. And as long as they are not free of the Soviet past, Russians will be unable to accept the paradox that the Soviet Union could be both liberator and occupier of half of Europe—and that they themselves were prisoners in their own country.”

(Jordan M. Poss’ blog post from May of last year contains another interesting reflection on “Orwell on History and ObjectiveTruth.”)

Quote of the Day (P. J. O'Rourke, on How America Remembers and Teaches History)

“We cannot, as a nation, know where we're going unless we know where we've been, even if I'm not exactly sure what I mean by that statement. Should we barrel down the highway to the future with our eyes glued to the rearview mirror? Should we keep in mind that if we forget history, we’ll end up repeating it, per that famous quote of Santayana? Yet consider the way history is taught these days: A survey of history students probably would show that they admire Santayana's genius but hope his next CD won't be just a remake of Supernatural with different vocalists.”— American humorist P. J. O'Rourke (1947-2022), “I Sing of Fizzy Fluid Retention,” The Atlantic, November 2007

Quote of the Day (Margaret Atwood, on ‘The Collective Memory’)

“The collective memory is notoriously faulty, and much of the past sinks into the ocean of time to be drowned forever; but once in a while the waters part, allowing us to glimpse a flash of hidden treasure, if only for a moment.” —Canadian novelist, poet and essayist Margaret Atwood, The Testaments: The Sequel to The Handmaid's Tale (2019)