“More history than ever is today being revised or invented by people who do not want the real past, but only a past that suits their purpose. Today is the great age of historical mythology. The defence of history by its professionals is today more urgent in politics than ever. We are needed.”
― Interesting Times: A Twentieth-Century Life
― Interesting Times: A Twentieth-Century Life
“The difference between ‘tradition’ and ‘custom’ in our sense is indeed well illustrated here. ‘Custom’ is what judges do; ‘tradition’ (in this instance invented tradition) is the wig, robe and other formal paraphernalia and ritualized practices surrounding their substantial action.”
― The Invention of Tradition
― The Invention of Tradition
“For all invented traditions, so far as possible, use history as a legitimator of action and cement of group cohesion.”
― The Invention of Tradition
― The Invention of Tradition
“If physical mobility is an essential condition of freedom, the bicycle has probably been the greatest single device for achieving what Marx called the full realization of the possibilities of being human invented since Gutenberg, and the only one without obvious drawbacks.”
― Interesting Times: A Twentieth-Century Life
― Interesting Times: A Twentieth-Century Life
“If a single misleading sentence is to sum up the relations of artist and society in this era, we might say that the French Revolution inspired him by its example, the Industrial Revolution by its horror, and the bourgeois society, which emerged from both, transformed his very existence and modes of creation.”
― The Age of Revolution, 1789–1848
― The Age of Revolution, 1789–1848
Sunil’s 2025 Year in Books
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