Alternative History Quotes

“Future Politics
Effecting change in national politics was mostly a matter of making better use of online forums, encouraging voters to press forth with hard questions, providing statistics and solutions. Direct-to-voter referendums became an increasingly common way of effecting national policy. If Congress were deadlocked over a particular issue, the voters would be asked to make up their minds for them in the form of an online referendum.”
― Nancy Omeara, The Most Popular President Who Ever Lived [So Far]

“Killing War

I had no desire to alter the viable occupations of humanity, but I was determined to do something about the level of regional bloodshed.
Education was my weapon of choice, based on a simple hypothesis: that the advance troops of physical carnage are the propaganda and lies that justify murder, making the real battleground that of ideas.
I was determined to address a situation where so many people were ready to kill, driven by the conviction that others are either evil incarnate or will murder them first if they don’t kill them first if they don’t …
Entire nations were buried in twisted truths submerged by hate, covered with vengeance. Voices of remorse, forgiveness, justice and reconciliation were drowned out by the din of screams for death or revenge.
The best defense system against the cycle of violence was something that is impervious to any tool of destruction ever spawned. That something is knowledge.”
― Nancy Omeara, The Most Popular President Who Ever Lived [So Far]

“Written twenty years after she held office, this abridged biography is being released now, prior to taking place.

Maybe we can learn from history before it happens.”
― Nancy Omeara, The Most Popular President Who Ever Lived [So Far]

“What is more precious: a thousand answers derived from one question? Or, one answer…from a thousand questions?”
― G. F. Smith

“There will never be slaves in Britain,' Godalming continued, 'but those who stay warm will naturally serve us, as the excellent Bessie has just served me. Have a care, lest you wind up the equivalent of some damned regimental water-bearer.'

In India, I knew a water-bearer who was a better man than most.”
― Kim Newman, Anno Dracula

“Having to accept hominoids as real will require having to acknowledge that the prehuman fossil record is comprised entirely of their bones, rather than ours.”
― Lloyd Pye

“Instead, they drew dragons. Big dragons, tiny dragons. Dragons destroying skyscrapers and dragons swimming with whales and dragons dancing on the head of a pin and dragons skidding down one arm of the Milky Way. Dragons in school desks. Dragons in cars. Dragons doing dishes. Dragons downing missiles. Dragons laying waste to armies or governments or home economics classrooms. There were no words. No explanations. No statements of intent. Just dragons.”
― Kelly Barnhill, When Women Were Dragons

“They're both plutocracies, rule by the rich. If they had won, all they'd have thought about was making more money, the upper class. Abendsen, he's wrong; there would be no social reform, no welfare public works plans - the Anglo-Saxon plutocrats wouldn't have permitted it.”
― Philip K. Dick, The Man in the High Castle

“Later that afternoon with the Germans already in Trafalgar Square and advancing down Whitehall to take their position in the rear, the enemy unit advancing across St. James 'Park made their final charge. Several of those in the Downing Street position were already dead... and at last the Bren ceased its chatter, its last magazine emptied.

Churchill reluctantly abandoned the machine-gun, drew his pistol and with great satisfaction, for it was a notoriously inaccurate weapon, shot dead the first German to reach the foot of the steps. As two more rushed forward, covered by a third in the distance, Winston Churchill moved out of the shelter of the sandbags, as if personally to bar the way up Downing Street. A German NCO, running up to find the cause of the unexpected hold-up, recognised him and shouted to the soldiers not to shoot, but he was too late. A burst of bullets from a machine-carbine caught the Prime Minister in the chest. He died instantly, his back to Downing Street, his face toward the enemy, his pistol still in his hand.”
― Norman Longmate

“Ancient historians lied. Modern historians play Chinese whispers. Now, it's time to tell you the true story of Lamia and her Knight - from the Garden of Eden to Ancient Rome.”
― Anna Canić

“What is happening is life’s way of telling us what should be happening.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“At the entrance of the Führerbunker, a dandelion pushed through the crack between cobblestones. The cadet did not notice that he stepped on it as they entered the bunker.

A dark cloud of smoke rose from a burning ministry. Zeller fantasized that the filth that surrounded him was cleansed. He saw himself, a portly and tailored leader in a white uniform with gold epaulets, buttons, and stripes.

He imagined himself in an immaculate, white city in Antarctica.”
― Paul Majkut, Stench of the Word

“On the Larch Scape humans had never managed to extend a sizeable population across entire continents, so much of the megafauna considered to be a distant Pleistocene memory on other Scapes had lingered. The mammoths, giant sloths and woolly rhinoceroses were extinct, but there were hyenas, fanged cats and amphicyonids hunting bison, omnivorous deer, glyptodons, great boars, and wild horses too large for men to ride south of the Laurentian Sea, in what was called Illinois on Malone’s Scape. The island of Manhattan was not an island due to the lower sea level, and it was uninhabited by men, an impenetrable mass of old growth larch trees ruled by creatures thought to be related to the raccoon. The Larch ‘raccoon’ was frequently said to be too intelligent to domesticate; in groups they would destroy shelters and eat the faces of sleeping humans. The atrox cat had been genetically sequenced in cooperation with Austral scientists years ago and determined to be more closely related to the lion than the cougar, and it had enjoyed a range extending north of the Laurentian Sea up to the glaciers until very recently. It was a dark creature with a thick mane in both genders; besides the elements, their prides were the deadliest things to encounter in the far north.”
― Mark Ferguson, Terra Incognita

“The United States are here, as are we; our two nations have a common border which stretches for two thousand miles, more or less. Either we learn not to be distracted by our differences or we fight a war every generation, as the nations of Europe are in the habit of doing. I would not care to see such folly come to our shores.”
― Harry Turtledove, The Guns of the South

“Prentice leaned forward. ‘This is where you’re free,’ he said, tapping his head. ‘Do what they want, but don’t let them in.”
― Shaun Musson, The Retrieval Chamber

“I’ve come to find that traveling the multiverse produces the same effect as a gnarly hangover induced by tequila, very distinct from one brought on by wine or whiskey. I have some experience with the former, more with the latter”
― M.K. Williams, The Infinite-Infinite

“You’re like the tide, you keep coming back to me. And each time you do you bring fresh salt spilling and gurgling into my wounds and you take away the ground that I stand on, leaving me to wonder when I’ll fall again.”
― M.K. Williams, The Infinite-Infinite

“You can’t keep jumping from reality to reality in hopes of finding one that you can fix. Or one that is perfect for you. No reality is perfect. You’re exactly where you’re meant to be. You have to stand and face reality.”
― M.K. Williams, The Infinite-Infinite

“The universe had just been upended. All of the pieces and places, the people and the particles, slid off a grand checkerboard and crashed into the ground, scattershot.”
― M.K. Williams, The Infinite-Infinite

“The minutes sped by with abandon. Each of them wasted, frittered away with Marie and Feminina circling the mental path that led them back to the same result. Every second skipped ahead, gleefully taunting Nina, laughing at her misery as time carried her further and further away from Hank again.”
― M.K. Williams, The Infinite-Infinite

“There are people who make a hobby of "alternative history," imagining how history would be different if small, chance events had gone another way One of my favorite examples is a story I first heard from the physicist Murray Gell-Mann. In the late 1800s, "Buffalo Bill" Cody created a show called Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, which toured the United States, putting on exhibitions of gun fighting, horsemanship, and other cowboy skills. One of the show's most popular acts was a woman named Phoebe Moses, nicknamed Annie Oakley. Annie was reputed to have been able to shoot the head off of a running quail by age twelve, and in Buffalo Bill's show, she put on a demonstration of marksmanship that included shooting flames off candles, and corks out of bottles. For her grand finale, Annie would announce that she would shoot the end off a lit cigarette held in a man's mouth, and ask for a brave volunteer from the audience. Since no one was ever courageous enough to come forward, Annie hid her husband, Frank, in the audience. He would "volunteer," and they would complete the trick together. In 1890, when the Wild West Show was touring Europe, a young crown prince (and later, kaiser), Wilhelm, was in the audience. When the grand finale came, much to Annie's surprise, the macho crown prince stood up and volunteered. The future German kaiser strode into the ring, placed the cigarette in his mouth, and stood ready. Annie, who had been up late the night before in the local beer garden, was unnerved by this unexpected development. She lined the cigarette up in her sights, squeezed...and hit it right on target.

Many people have speculated that if at that moment, there had been a slight tremor in Annie's hand, then World War I might never have happened. If World War I had not happened, 8.5 million soldiers and 13 million civilian lives would have been saved. Furthermore, if Annie's hand had trembled and World War I had not happened, Hitler would not have risen from the ashes of a defeated Germany, and Lenin would not have overthrown a demoralized Russian government. The entire course of twentieth-century history might have been changed by the merest quiver of a hand at a critical moment. Yet, at the time, there was no way anyone could have known the momentous nature of the event.”
― Eric D. Beinhocker, The Origin of Wealth: Evolution, Complexity, and the Radical Remaking of Economics

“He read of Lincoln's second inaugural address and of the broad peace Lincoln hoped to gain, and, a page later, he read of the bullet that had slain Lincoln on Good Friday evening in 1865. He clicked his tongue between his teeth at the thought of a President dying at an assassin's hands. Then, all at once, he shivered as if suddenly seized by an ague. He had seen Lincoln in Louisville that Good Friday, had listened to him plead without avail for Kentucky to stay in the Union, had even spoken with him. He shivered again. In defeat in the world he knew, Lincoln had wanted to martyr himself for the United States. In the other world, where there was no need for it, he had been made a martyr in the hour of his greatest triumph.”
― Harry Turtledove, The Guns of the South

“Marksist tarihyazımı öldü mü? Sovyetlerin yıkılmasıyla birlikte, Marksist tarihyazımının da öldüğünü söyleyenler var; oysa bu, 2 nedenle doğru değil. Birincisi, Marksist tarihyazımı, Sovyetler ya da daha sonra kapitalistleşen Çin’in tekelinde değildi ve olmadı. Türkiye başta gelmek üzere birçok ülkede, Sovyet yanlısı da Çin yanlısı da olmayan güçlü sol hareketler vardı. Bu sol hareketler de Marksist’ti ve tarihi Marksist açıdan yorumluyorlardı. Bu üçüncü grup, çeşitli eğilimlerden oluşuyordu. Bunların içinde en güçlü akım, Küba başta olmak üzere Latin Amerika’dan esinlenen kurtuluş hareketleriydi. Bu hareketler, sömürgecilik karşıtı mücadelelerinde işçi sınıfını tarihin tek öznesi olarak görmediler. Tek bir sınıf indirgemeciliğinden çok, halk kesimlerine yönelik olarak çalışma yürüttüler. Halkın değişik kesimleri vardı, tarih de kalıptan çıkmış ikiliklerle yorumlanamazdı. Bunlar Sovyetlerin katı sınıfsal çözümlemelerinin tersine, ezen-ezilen ve sömüren-sömürülen gibi karşıtlıklar üzerinden halkın değişik kesimlerine yöneldiler. Bu yöneliş hem onların daha da yaygınlık kazanmasını sağladı hem de ileride gelecek tarihyazımı eklerini benimsemelerini kolaylaştırdı.”
― Ulaş Başar Gezgin, Ötekilerin Tarihi: Marksist Tarih Yazımı ve Vietnam Üzerine

“Tarihe saf bakış, tarihçinin, olayları olduğu gibi yazdığını ileri sürüyor. Iggers’a göre, eskiden, tarih, bir yazın türü olarak ele alınıyordu ve günümüzde tarihçinin nesnelliğinden söz edilse de, tarih, bugün de, yazından tümüyle kopuk değil; çünkü tarihyazımı, öykülemeyi; öykülemeyse, kurguyu gerektiriyor. Tam da bunun için, tarih kavramının yanına, ‘tarihyazımı’ (historiography) diye bir kavram da konulmuş durumda. Yine de, eskil tarihçiler, tarihlerine ders çıkarılacak öykücükler koyarken; bugün, bu, tarihçide olması beklenen nesnelliğin dışına taşmak olarak değerlendiriliyor.”
― Ulaş Başar Gezgin, Ötekiler Açısından Tarih: Avcıların Efsaneleri, Aslanların Kısık Sesleri

“Trust no one.’ His youthful eyes met Hutcheons’s and he leaned closer. ‘And trust no thing either: things are people too.”
― Shaun Musson, The Retrieval Chamber

“Propaganda is the most powerful invention of all time because it enables human selection. It moulds thinking. It creates saints and devils. It ensures that for every Mother Theresa there are a hundred little Hitlers; and a couple of bigger ones.”
― Shaun Musson, The Retrieval Chamber

“All capitalism proved itself capable of after 2020 — just as after 2008 — was a fascinating reversal of natural selection: the larger an institution's failure and the steeper it's financial losses, the greater it's capacity to appropriate society's surplus bailouts.”
― Yanis Varoufakis, Another Now: Dispatches from an Alternative Present

“At the center of my life, I have found new hope and a renewed direction. I feel the communal surge of spirit amidst a group of people who had, like us, lost theirs to some degree in the places they fled. I will not allow Theo to bring me down. I will lift him up.”
― Penelope Przekop, Centerpieces

“Life isn't mapped out for us, Tom,' I say. 'We can change! We can do it together. Let's not give up on each other now. There is too much to lose; I love you.”
― Penelope Przekop, Centerpieces

“Life isn't mapped out for us, Tom," I say. "We can change! We can do it together. Let's not give up on each other now. There is too much to lose; I love you.”
― Penelope Przekop, Centerpieces