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" It's our vanity that makes us think that what forms part of our world today must be stable and secure. "
Norman Davies
Secure
Us
Vanity
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" The Black Sea is Eastern Europe's counterpart to the Mediterranean. "
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" States seem to have a natural life cycle, and anything can occur to change them into something else, and that something might be no bad thing. "
Norman Davies
Anything
Life
Change
" None of Europe's modern nations are genuinely native. "
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Modern
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" All states and nations, however great, bloom for a season and are replaced. "
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Season
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" Our mental maps are distorted by who are the 'winners' of history and who are the powers of today. "
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" History is very much bound up in family experience. "
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Up
Experience
Family
" The one certainly for anyone in the path of an avalanche is this: standing still is not an option. "
Norman Davies
Option
Standing
Still
" A bad historian is even more dangerous than dead documentary wood. "
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Wood
Than
Bad
" Europe's fragmentation puts the wider historical picture beyond reach. "
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Picture
Historical
Beyond
" Bulgaria was the only Axis country to deflect insistent German demands for the deportation of its Jews. "
Norman Davies
Jews
Country
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" Poland is the natural bridge between East and West. "
Norman Davies
West
Natural
Poland
" There is history in condoms, there is history in lampshades, there is history in everything. "
Norman Davies
Everything
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" I wanted to produce a book that would demonstrate not only the rich diversity of people who answered to Anders's command but also the extraordinary variety of their experiences and emotions: from death to despair, fear and longings and eventually to hope. "
Norman Davies
Hope
Diversity
Death
" 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. "
Norman Davies
World
History
Think
" The United Kingdom is not, and never has been, a nation state. "
Norman Davies
Been
Never
United
" It's the historian's job not to ridicule the myths, but to show the difference between myth and reality. "
Norman Davies
Job
Difference
Myths
" 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. "
Norman Davies
Women
Children
Endurance
" I do belong to the club which doesn't see a distinction between academic history and popular history. "
Norman Davies
Club
See
Academic
" It's unimaginable to meet a Pole or a German who does not know about the history of their country. But lots of English people don't know the difference between Britain and England. "
Norman Davies
History
Know
Country
" Serenity is the balance between good and bad, life and death, horrors and pleasures. Life is, as it were, defined by death. If there wasn't death of things, then there wouldn't be any life to celebrate. "
Norman Davies
Balance
Death
Good
" The E.U. is an organization that was created after the Second World War for calming down the nationalism of member states, and it did so very successfully. "
Norman Davies
Organization
World
Second
" Myth-making is absolutely necessary to create the simplified images that people live off. "
Norman Davies
Live
Necessary
Create
" I don't see why a book shouldn't be intellectually sound, entertaining, and fun to read. Historians who write academic history, which is unreadable, are basically wasting their time. "
Norman Davies
See
Book
Time
" The Euro Sceptics are the English National Party in disguise, and they have poor old David Cameron over a barrel. "
Norman Davies
Old
Party
Poor
" All political institutions will end sooner or later. The question is when and how. "
Norman Davies
How
End
Will
" 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
Remember
I Can
" In essence, the tragedy of the Warsaw Rising resulted from a systemic breakdown of the Grand Alliance. "
Norman Davies
Essence
Alliance
Rising
" One might have thought that 70 years was time enough to work out what really happened in 1939. It isn't the case. Misunderstandings and misinformation abound. "
Norman Davies
Time
Years
Enough
" Poland was the racial laboratory of the Nazis. This is where they started to put their abhorrent theories into practice. "
Norman Davies
Laboratory
Racial
Practice
" Transience is one of the fundamental characteristics both of the human condition and of the political order. "
Norman Davies
Political
Human
Order