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The essence of studying history is that, as best we can, we try to wear the shoes and put on the spectacles worn by people of the past. We try to see the obstacles and dilemmas they struggled against or evaded. We also hope that the future will try to understand why we made blunders, and learn from failures and achievements of our era.

— Geoffrey Blainey

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More quotes by Geoffrey Blainey

In a democracy, all voters are equal but not all are responsible. Compulsory voting ignores that elemental truth.

Innovation is usually not a gigantic step but a series of small jumps involving various enterprising people whose names are soon forgotten.

The Story of Australia's People: The Rise and Rise of a New Australia (2016)

Whether we like the idea or not, war has again and again been seen as the great auditor, the special testing time, of a nation's strength and fibre.

In economics, as in politics, no national reservoir can stand the strain when everyone is turning on the taps and few are bothering to see that the catchments to the reservoir are working.

Eye on Australia: Speeches and Essays of Geoffrey Blainey (1991)

Democracy is a freak condition in the world's history: civil liberties are not common liberties even today, and most people in the world have never possessed them.

The Great Seesaw: A New View of the Western World, 1750-2000 (1988)

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A generation which ignores history has no past —and no future.

Robert A. Heinlein Time Enough for Love (1973)

History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.

James Joyce Ulysses (1922)

If we don’t care about our past we can’t have very much hope for our future.

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past, — so good night!

Thomas Jefferson

Attribution

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