"[talking about the Holocaust] 'But to put something in context is a step towards saying it can be understood and that it can be explained. And if it can be explained that it can be explained away.' 'But this is History. Distance yourselves. Our perspective on the past alters. Looking back, immediately in front of us is dead ground. We don't see it, and because we don't see it this means that there is no period so remote as the recent past. And one of the historian's jobs is to anticipate what our perspective of that period will be... even on the Holocaust."

-- Alan Bennett

#Jobs Quotes #Distance Quotes #Mean Quotes

“Civil liberty is the status of the man who is guaranteed by law and civil institutions the exclusive employment of all his own powers for his own welfare.”
“Fame - a few words upon a tombstone, and the truth of those not to be depended on.”
“Dain kept his gaze on his plate and concentrated on swallowing the morsel he'd just very nearly choked on. She was possessive... about him. The beautiful, mad creature - or blind and deaf creature, or whatever she was - coolly announced it as one might say, "Pass the salt cellar," without the smallest awareness that the earth had just tilted on its axis.”
“I'm going to be pissed if I walk all the way to the camp and end up getting shot.”
“In an orchard there should be enough to eat, enough to lay up, enough to be stolen, and enough to rot on the ground.”

Source : James Boswell (1807). “The life of Samuel Johnson, LL. D.: comprehending an account of his studies and numerous works, in chronological order; a series of his epistolatory correspondence and conversations with many eminent persons; and various original pieces of his composition, never before published: the whole exhibiting a view of literature and literary men in Great-Britain, for near half a century during which he flourished”, p.309
“Physiologically, it simply doesn't matter whether your anger is justified or not. The body doesn't make moral judgements about feelings; it just responds.”
“Obviously there is pain in childbirth. But giving birth is also a moment of awe and wonder, a moment when the true miracle of aliveness, and of a woman's amazing part in that miracle, is suddenly experienced in every cell of one's body. It is in that sense truly an altered state of consciousness.”
“The band was rejuvenated by that wonderful day. It breathed new life into us.”

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