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Always the victor writes the history of the vanquished. He who beats distorts the faces of the beaten. The weaker depart from this world and the lies remain.

— Bertolt Brecht The Trial of Lucullus (1940)

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History

More quotes by Bertolt Brecht

Oh why do we not say the important things, it would be so easy, and we are damned because we do not.

Poems, 1913-1956 (1976)

Mixing one's wines may be a mistake, but old and new wisdom mix admirably.

Spring is noticed, if at all
By people sitting in railway trains.

Poems, 1913-1956 (1976)

Don't be afraid of death so much as an inadequate life.

The Mother (1930)

Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are. (Weil die Dinge sind, wie sie sind, werden die Dinge nicht so bleiben wie sie sind.)

Dictionary of Contemporary Quotations (1976)

All Bertolt Brecht quotes →

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