Simon Schama Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• In the end, history, especially British history with its succession of thrilling illuminations, should be, as all her most accomplished narrators have promised, not just instruction but pleasure.

  Simon Schama

  Illumination, History, Narrators

  Simon Schama (2000). “A History of Britain: At the edge of the world? 3000 BC-AD 1603”, Miramax

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• These men were very much in the minority, but of course, being the 'Elect', they expected to be in a minority - the party of redemption. In fact they glorified in the slightness of their numbers, the self-purifying troop of Gideon's army... stormtroopers in the front line of the Reformation.

  Simon Schama

  Party, Army, Men

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• From the days of the Founding Fathers, right to this (2008) election, how and where America fights to defend its freedom, has been the ultimate question in its politics. The one that triggers rage and sorrow; the one that asks is the price of blood too dear? Or, if it is to stay true to its convictions, does America have no coice but to put its lives on the line?

  Simon Schama

  Father, War, Fighting

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• In America, much foreign policy seems contrived to be an exercise in political theory with no attention to history whatsoever. Yet there's a great reverence for history - though it's history as thumb-sucking, security blanket-nibbling self-congratulation.

  Simon Schama

  Congratulations, Exercise, Self

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• Walking on camera is damn hard. It's a Jewish problem. The rangy stride across the blasted moor is not really a Jewish thing.

  Simon Schama

  Cameras, Problem, Moors

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• We seem wired to grieve with greenery. Allowing the dead to dissolve into the earth, to become part of the cycle of the seasons, has, for millennia, held the promise of cheating mortality.

  Simon Schama

  Cheating, Grieving, Promise

  Simon Schama (2004). “Hang-ups: Essays on Painting (mostly)”, BBC Books

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• DIY, cricket, automobile repair. I could study it for a lifetime and not produce a word on the carburettor.

  Simon Schama

  Diy, Study, Lifetime

  "Simon Schama: 'I'm the inevitable old codger on the dancefloor'". Interview with Tim Adams, www.theguardian.com. July 30, 2011.

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• To collude in the minimisation of British history on the grounds of its imagined irrelevance to our rebranded national future, or from a suspicion that it does no more than recycle patriotic pieties unsuited to a global marketplace, would be an act of appallingly self-inflicted collective memory loss.

  Simon Schama

  Memories, Patriotic, Loss

  Simon Schama (2000). “A History of Britain: At the edge of the world? 3000 BC-AD 1603”, Miramax

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• Charles was constitutionally incapable of being a constitutional monarch.

  Simon Schama

  History, British History, Incapable

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• At 11, 12 I thought I was clumsy, ugly, a mess, an unappealing person, but I did have the gift of the gab. I had the school record at Haberdashers for consecutive detentions for simply speaking out of turn.

  Simon Schama

  School, Records, Ugly

  "Lunch with Mariella: Simon Schama". Interview with Mariella Frostrupv, www.theguardian.com. June 19, 2010.

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• I first read War And Peace about 100 years after Tolstoy wrote it.

  Simon Schama

  War, Years, Firsts

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