#histories

Take your place, then. Look at what happened from every side and consider all the other ways it could have gone. Consider, even, an Africa unconquered altogether. Imagine those first Portuguese adventurers approaching the shore, spying on the jungle’s edge through their fitted brass lenses. Imagine that by some miracle of dread or reverence they lowered their spyglasses, turned, set their riggings, sailed on. Imagine all who came after doing the same. What would that Africa be now? All I can think of is the other okapi, the one they used to believe in. A unicorn that could look you in the eye. ↗

— Barbara Kingsolver

#alternative-histories #freedom #freedom

But whatsoever betide, let us be ever venturesome; for nought comes of itself, and all men's gains are the fruit of adventure. ↗

— Herodotus of Halicarnassus

#men

I worry about anthropomorphism as a form of self-deception. (The Christian religion is an anthropomorphic account of the universe.) ↗

— A.S. Byatt

#religion

I don't chart out the life histories of the people I play. If I did, I'd be in trouble. I work with my heart and my head, and naturally emotions follow. ↗

— Ernest Borgnine

#did #emotions #follow #head #heart

There must be possible a fiction which, leaving sociology and case histories to the scientists, can arrive at the truth about the human condition, here and now, with all the bright magic of the fairy tale. ↗

— Ralph Ellison

#arrive #bright #case #condition #fairy

Society mends its wounds. And that's invariably true in all the tragedies, in the comedies as well. And certainly in the histories. ↗

— Charlton Heston

#comedies #histories #invariably #society #tragedies

The histories which we have of the great tragedy give no idea of the general wretchedness, the squalid misery, which entered into every individual life in the region given up to the war. Where the armies camped the destruction was absolute. ↗

— Rebecca Harding Davis

#armies #camped #destruction #entered #every

Political corruption is endemic all over this country, in some places worse than others, right? On crime, you have all the major American cities where the crime rates at different points in their histories, have spiked dramatically. ↗

— Mitch Landrieu

#american cities #cities #corruption #country #crime

The histories of mankind are histories only of the higher classes. ↗

— Thomas Malthus

#higher #histories #mankind #only

Recounting their histories, people often sound like interested bystanders to their own lives. ↗

— Hugh Mackay

#interested #like #lives #often #own