Historical Narrative Quotes

“All profound changes in consciousness, by their very nature, bring with them characteristic amnesias. Out of such oblivions, in specific historical circumstances, spring narratives… The photograph… is only the most peremptory of a huge modern accumulation of documentary evidence… which simultaneously records a certain apparent continuity and emphasizes its loss from memory. Out of this estrangement comes a conception of personhood, identity… which, because it cannot be “remembered”, must be narrated.”
― Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism

“I remembered attending one of Dr. Kerry's lectures, which he had begun by writing, "Who writes history?" on the blackboard. I remembered how strange the question had seemed to me then. My idea of a historian was not human; it was of someone like my father, more prophet than man, whose visions of the past, like those of the future, could not be questioned, or even augmented. Now, as I passed through King's college, in the shadow of the enormous chapel, my old diffidence seemed almost funny. Who writes history? I thought. I do.”
― Tara Westover, Educated

“But however minimal, however threadbare, it (collective memory) is ballast of a kind. We all need that seven-eighths of the iceberg, the ballast of the past, a general past, the place from which we came.
That is why history should be taught in school. to all children, as much of it as possible. If you have no sense of the past, no access to historical narrative, you are afloat, untethered; you cannot see yourself as a part of the narrative, you cannot place yourself within a context. You will not have an understanding of time, and a respect for memory and its subtle victory over the remorselessness of time.”
― Penelope Lively

“Travels are one of the sources of history: by the narratives of travelers the history of foreign nations is placed beside the particular history of each country," wrote François-René de Chateaubriand in the preface to his Travels in America (1836)”
― Sabine Arque, The Grand Tour: The Golden Age of Travel

“For Zen Buddhism, historical narratives do matter; stories of the "transmission of the lamp" of the awakened mind down through the ages constitute the narrative thread that holds the history of Zen together, supporting the continuity and authority of its institutional tradition. But what matters most to many sincere Zen practitioners, especially today, is how the teachings and practices embedded in those stories can illuminate and change our lives—not when, where, and by whom they were first taught and written down.”
― Bret W Davis, Zen Pathways: An Introduction to the Philosophy and Practice of Zen Buddhism

“Those who see their history only through the eyes of the victors are destined to become the victims in the histories yet to be written.”
― Lawrence Nault - The Mountain Hermit