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" At the end of the Roman Empire, in the Byzantine period, the empire shrinks and shrinks until it consists of one city, Constantinople, and the Ottoman Turks can encircle it. "
Norman Davies
Empire
City
End
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" Europe's fragmentation puts the wider historical picture beyond reach. "
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" The United Kingdom is not, and never has been, a nation state. "
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" People don't see very often their death coming... Look at the French Revolution: The king of France was thinking in the 1780s, 'We're doing rather better than my father in the 1770s.' "
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" Young people have to learn in a cocoon filled with false optimism. Unlike their parents and grandparents, they grow up with very little sense of the pitiless passage of time. "
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" Capacity of human societies both to absorb and to discard cultures is much underestimated. "
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" It is important to remember that John Paul II was not an American or a Frenchman. "
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" Winners of wars get a standing start in the post-war stakes of remembrance. "
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" I always needle a bit when people say I'm a champion of the Poles, because I've always had a very multinational view of Poland. "
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" Fifty years would seem to be time enough to prepare a definitive history of the Second World War. In an age of instant data-gathering, one might think that the historians could have arrived at a consensus for interpreting the main events of the war. In reality, no such consensus exists. "
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" Transience is one of the fundamental characteristics both of the human condition and of the political order. "
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Political
Human
Order
" I find myself sick to death, tired of arguing about details with people who don't know basic facts. "
Norman Davies
Death
Details
Myself
" For people familiar with Eastern Europe, Marci Shore's 'The Taste of Ashes' is, in spite of its subject matter, delicious. A professor at Yale with much experience in Eastern Europe, she writes with great sureness of touch, weaving personal recollections with intellectual commentary and ideas with emotions, including her own. "
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She
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" It's the historian's job not to ridicule the myths, but to show the difference between myth and reality. "
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Difference
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" I first heard of General Anders and his army more than 50 years ago. I admired him then, and I admire him still; and I feel a special bond with the men, women and children whom he rescued from hunger, disease, and official abuse. Theirs is a story of endurance and fortitude that gives one faith in the human spirit. "
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Women
Children
Endurance
" I first came across the Anders Army story by accident. When I first went to live in Oxford in the 1960s, I discovered that some of my close neighbours had been on the Anders trail. "
Norman Davies
First
Story
Army
" I can just remember the blitz of Manchester, or perhaps my father's tales about the blitz of Manchester. I can remember the blackout, the powdered eggs, and the gas masks. But I think no British person should pretend that being resident in England could count as being in the thick of the action. "
Norman Davies
Think
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" Only by painting the great panorama of history, can the great history-reading public be entertained or satisfied. "
Norman Davies
Satisfied
Great
History
" The last years of fading communism provided an ideal environment for Poland's Catholic Church, which acted as an umbrella for dissenters of all sorts. "
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Church
Last
Environment
" One of the problems in the Ukrainian crisis is that very few Westerners know their history, or if they know it, what they learn is what we call the Russian version of history. "
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Know
History
Crisis
" A bad historian is even more dangerous than dead documentary wood. "
Norman Davies
Wood
Than
Bad
" So long as classical education and classical prejudices prevailed, educated Englishmen inevitably saw ancient Britain as an alien land. "
Norman Davies
Alien
Educated
Education
" There is history in condoms, there is history in lampshades, there is history in everything. "
Norman Davies
Everything
History
" Traditionally, historians thought in terms of invasions: the Celts took over the islands, then the Romans, then the Anglo-Saxons. It now seems much more likely that the resident population doesn't change as much as thought. The people stay put but are reculturalized by some new dominant culture. "
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" The question is whether a confident Europe will be a rival for North America - or whether they will work together and become a more unified bloc. "
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Will
" History must give the Poles the principal credit for bringing the Soviet bloc to its knees. "
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Principal
Knees
History
" All states and nations, however great, bloom for a season and are replaced. "
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States
Season
Bloom
" History is very much bound up in family experience. "
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Up
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Family
" There is a real danger of the United Kingdom breaking up. There is a loss of common identity. "
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Danger
Identity
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" Historical change is like an avalanche. The starting point is a snow-covered mountainside that looks solid. All changes take place under the surface and are rather invisible. "
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" The Law and Justice government does not want a bunch of foreign historians to decide what goes on in 'their' museum. "
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Government
Museum
Justice