Margaret MacMillan famous quotes

Last updated: Sep 5, 2024

We can learn from history, but we can also deceive ourselves when we selectively take evidence from the past to justify what we have already made up our minds to do.
-- Margaret MacMillan

#Past #Mind #Deceiving
History should not be written to make the present generation feel good but to remind us that human affairs are complicated.
-- Margaret MacMillan

#Feel Good #Generations #Complicated
Passionate and forcefully argued, Tar Sands is a wake-up call not just to Canadians but to the wider world to take a serious look at what is happening in northern Alberta. To call this book a polemic is a compliment.
-- Margaret MacMillan

#Book #Looks #Wake Up

Science fiction is never about the future, in the same way history is rarely about the past: they're both parable formats for examining or commenting on the present.
Often we want people to pray for us and help us, but we always defeat our object when we look too much to them and lean upon them. The true secret of union is for both to look upon God, and in the act of looking past themselves to Him they are unconsciously united.
So with truth - there is a certain moment when one can say, this is the truth and here I put a dot, a stop, and I go to another thing. A judge has to put an end to a deliberation. But for a historian, theres never an end to the past. It can go on and on and on.
History is not another name for the past, as many people imply. It is the name for stories about the past.
There are many who lust for the simple answers of doctrine or decree. They are on the left and right. They are not confined to a single part of the society. They are terrorists of the mind.
The mind is like a river. The thoughts are like the various droplets of water. We are submerged in that water. Stay on the bank and watch your mind.
Are you really angry, or simply aware of anger in the body and mind? Don't speculate, simply look at what is there.
The approach of death certainly concentrates the mind.
Middle age has been defined as what happens when a person's broad mind and narrow waist change places.
When we see an effect happen always in the same manner, we infer that it takes place by a natural necessity; as, for instance, that the sun will rise to morrow; but nature often deceives us, and will not submit to its own rules.

Margaret MacMillan famous quotes

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