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" Law and Justice are the most vindictive gang in Europe. "
Norman Davies
Europe
Most
Law
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" All states and nations, however great, bloom for a season and are replaced. "
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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 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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" It's our vanity that makes us think that what forms part of our world today must be stable and secure. "
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Secure
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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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Had
Say
View
" 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. "
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Think
Remember
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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
" The advance of standard English culture was less assisted by government policy than by the sheer weight, wealth, and number of England's well-established cultural institutions. "
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Government
Wealth
Culture
" 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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People
Change
Culture
" Northern Ireland must, in future, be absorbed into the Irish republic. Wales and Scotland must advance from devolution to full independent status. The four nations of these islands must commit themselves absolutely to the project of a United Europe. "
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Future
Independent
Project
" 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. "
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Empire
City
End
" It was in the 20th century that national sovereignty really ruled the roost, and the E.U. was formed to cure that. "
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Cure
Sovereignty
Really
" 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. "
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First
Story
Army
" In the long run, Europe will certainly move toward unification. But it will be a process of push and pull, and there will be resistance. "
Norman Davies
Resistance
Long
Process
" 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
" I do belong to the club which doesn't see a distinction between academic history and popular history. "
Norman Davies
Club
See
Academic
" 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
" Nearly all interested parties think I write too shortly on the subjects that interest them most. "
Norman Davies
Think
Interest
Write
" In the 21st century, there will probably be a reflex against the disintegration of traditional European culture. What started as a reaction will come full circle, and there will be a return to the roots. "
Norman Davies
Circle
Reaction
Roots
" 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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World
History
Think
" Poland is the natural bridge between East and West. "
Norman Davies
West
Natural
Poland
" The historical profession is nowhere famous for its tolerance, but there are not many countries where historians can expect to pay for their opinions with penal servitude or the firing squad. "
Norman Davies
Opinions
Tolerance
Squad
" History must give the Poles the principal credit for bringing the Soviet bloc to its knees. "
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Principal
Knees
History
" Poland in the 1990s saw a surge of unrestrained, American-style capitalism. With millions of Poles living in the U.S.A., the defeat of communism led many to aim for a lifestyle derivative of Chicago or Detroit. "
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Capitalism
Communism
Defeat
" A bad historian is even more dangerous than dead documentary wood. "
Norman Davies
Wood
Than
Bad
" 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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Death
People
King
" In 1945, when the Second World War technically ends in Poland, the incoming Soviet army liberates some groups of people but begins to oppress the general population, in some ways more harshly than it had happened before. "
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World
More
Army
" It's the historian's job not to ridicule the myths, but to show the difference between myth and reality. "
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Job
Difference
Myths
" I find myself sick to death, tired of arguing about details with people who don't know basic facts. "
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Death
Details
Myself
" History is very much bound up in family experience. "
Norman Davies
Up
Experience
Family