History isn't what happened, history is just what historians tell us. — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“History: the lies of the victors, the self-delusions of the defeated.” — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation. — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“Sejarah bukanlah apa yang terjadi. Sejarah hanyalah apa yang dituturkan sejarawan kepada kita.” — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“History is a raw onion sandwich, it just repeats, it burps. We've seen it again and again this year. Same old story,… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“Why slum it where people were burdened by yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that? By history? Here, on… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
That's one of the central problems of history, isn't it, sir? The question of subjective versus objective interpretation, the fact that we… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“my desire to ascribe responsibility might be more a reflection of my own cast of mind than a fair analysis of what… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
History isn't the lies of the victors, as I once glibly assured Old Joe Hunt; I know that now. It's more the… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“We can study files for decades, but every so often we are tempted to throw up our hands and declare that history… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“This is where we work, in the interstices of ignorance, the land of contradiction and silence, planning to convince you with the… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“historians need to treat a participant’s own explanation of events with a certain scepticism. It is often the statement made with an… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“We may choose to freeze a moment and say that it all 'began' then, but as an historian I have to tell… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“From The Noise of Time: What could be put up against the noise of time? Only that music which is inside ourselves--the… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“Our nights are different. She falls asleep like someone yielding to the gentle tug of a warm tide, and floats with confidence… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“We want to blame an individual so that everyone else is exculpated. Or we blame a historical process as a way of… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“If you'll excuse a brief history lesson: most people didn't experience 'the sixties' until the seventies. Which meant, logically, that most people… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
What is history? Any thoughts, Webster?' 'History is the lies of the victors,' I replied, a little too quickly. 'Yes, I was… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“Is there anything more plausible than a second hand? And yet it takes only the smallest pleasure or pain to teach us… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“If a memory wasn't a thing but a memory of a memory of a memory, mirrors set in parallel, then what the… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“Perhaps I just feel safer with the history that’s been more or less agreed upon. Or perhaps it’s that same paradox again:… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“The past is a distant, receding coastline, and we are all in the same boat. Along the stern rail there is a… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“Someone once said that his favourite times in history were when things were collapsing, because that meant something new was being born.… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“The history of the world? Just voices echoing in the dark; images that burn for a few centuries and then fade; stories,… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“Also, when you are young, you think you can predict the likely pains and bleaknesses that age might bring. You imagine yourself… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
We live in time, it bounds us and defines us, and time is supposed to measure history, isn't it? But if we… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“And does history repeat itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce?No, that’s too grand, too considered a process.… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“We all know objective truth is not obtainable, that when some event occurs we shall have a multiplicity of subjective truths which… — Julian Barnes Copy Share Image
“You put together two things that have not been put together before. And the world is changed. People may not notice at the time,… — Julian Barnes Copy Share
“I settled into a contented routine of working, spending my free time with Veronica and, back in my student room, wanking explosively to fantasies… — Julian Barnes Copy Share
The greatest patriotism is to tell your country when it is behaving dishonorably, foolishly, viciously. — Julian Barnes Copy Share
“There is only good vodka and very good vodka—there is no such thing as bad vodka.” — Julian Barnes Copy Share
Alice Munro can move characters through time in a way that no other writer can. — Julian Barnes Copy Share
How rarely do our emotions meet the object they seem to deserve? How hopelessly we signal; how dark the sky; how big the waves.… — Julian Barnes Copy Share
You put together two people who have not been put together before. Sometimes it is like that first attempt to harness a hydrogen balloon… — Julian Barnes Copy Share
“Also, when you are young, you think you can predict the likely pains and bleaknesses that age might bring. You imagine yourself being lonely,… — Julian Barnes Copy Share
“Why slum it where people were burdened by yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that? By history? Here, on the Island,… — Julian Barnes Copy Share
“In those years before mobile phones, email and Skype, travelers depended on the rudimentary communications system known as the postcard. Other methods--the long-distance phone… — Julian Barnes Copy Share
“My train was late, slowed by the usual Sunday engineering work. I got home in the early evening. I remember that I had a… — Julian Barnes Copy Share
“Indeed, isn’t the whole business of ascribing responsibility kind of a cop-out? We want to blame an individual so that everyone else is exculpated.… — Julian Barnes Copy Share
Some of the freckles I once loved are now closer to liver spots. But it’s still the eyes we look at, isn’t it? That’s… — Julian Barnes Copy Share
“And what percentage of people take up the option to die off?’ She looked at me, her glance telling me to be calm. ‘Oh,… — Julian Barnes Copy Share
