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When reality does not coincide with deeply held beliefs, human beings tend to phrase interpretations that force reality within the scope of these beliefs. They devise formulas to repress the unthinkable and to bring it back within the realm of accepted discourse.

— Michel-Rolph Trouillot Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (1995)

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More quotes by Michel-Rolph Trouillot

Built into any system of domination is the tendency to proclaim its own normalcy. To acknowledge resistance as a mass phenomenon is to acknowledge the possibility that something is wrong with the system.

Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (1995)

History is the fruit of power, but power itself is never so transparent that its analysis becomes superfluous. The ultimate mark of power may be its invisibility; the ultimate challenge, the exposition of its roots.

Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (1995)

My moral turn to history may begin with this extraordinary capacity of liberals since at least the Enlightenment to feel good about themselves while history goes on its merry bloody way.

Theorizing a Global Perspective (1996)

The seventeenth century saw the increased involvement of England, France, and the Netherlands in the Americas and in the slave trade. The eighteenth century followed the same path with a touch of perversity: the more European merchants and mercenaries bought and conquered other men and women, the more European philosophers wrote and talked about Man.

Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (1995)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Michel-Rolph Trouillot (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.