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History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation.

— Julian Barnes The Sense of an Ending (2011)

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More quotes by Julian Barnes

This is I have to admit, one murky compartment of the female psyche which has yet to benefit from the oven-scourer of Reason.

Talking It Over (1991)

Now, Stuart, as you will discover if you have not done so already, believes that the principal raison d'etre of food is to conceal from public view the hideous pattern on the plate beneath.

Talking It Over (1991)

You need one of those slave-driving old studio bosses if you ask me, not a sensitive graduate who went into movies because he liked the clouds in Antonioni and then turned himself into a nouvelle vague Deutscher all hot for Truthspiel.

A History of the World in 10½ Chapters (1989)

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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: Julian Barnes (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.