Ralph Davis famous quotes

History attempts to provide society with an artificial collective memory.
-- Ralph Davis

#Memories #Collective Memory #History

[T]he historian and the detective have much in common.
-- Ralph Davis

#History #Detectives #Common

A historian is interested in the past because he is interested in life... a deeply felt need to assure the continuity of human life and discover its meaning, even if the goal is never fully realized.
-- Ralph Davis

#Past #Goal #Needs

Experience has taught me, when I am shaving of a morning, to keep watch over my thoughts, because, if a line of poetry strays into my memory, my skin bristles so that the razor ceases to act.

It's hard to say what I want my legacy to be when I'm long gone.

We had our thing. It is a really good memory but now we're older. Things change.

Sixty years after the end of the war, the time has come to make this information available. With the number of survivors and witnesses diminishing by the day, and the reality that the Holocaust is fading into the pages of history and memory, we should not have to wait any longer.

It was all I had, all I've ever had, the only currency, the only proof that I was alive. Memory.

I know that history is simultaneously a bloody mess and a collection of feats so inspiring and amazing they make you proud to share the same DNA structure with the rest of humanity. I know you'd better focus on the good stuff or you're screwed.

History is not a catalogue but...a convincing version of events.

The male clerk with his quill pen and copper-plate handwriting had gone for good. The female short-hand typist took his place. It was a decisive moment in women's emancipation.

It is hard to think of anything which more tragically and clearly exemplifies the phenomenon of good political intentions achieving the precise opposite of their aim.

History is not history unless it is the truth.