Margaret MacMillan Quotes.

1. "We can learn from history, but we can also deceive ourselves when we selectively take evidence from the past to justify what we have already made up our minds to do."
- Quote by Margaret MacMillan

2. "We should not be impressed when our leaders say firmly, "History teaches us" or "History will show that we were right." They can oversimplify and force inexact comparisons just as much as any of us can. Even the clever and the powerful (and the two are not necessarily the same) go confidently off down the wrong paths. It is useful, too, to be reminded, as a citizen, that those in positions of authority do not always know better."
- Quote by Margaret MacMillan

3. "Louvain was a dull place, said a guidebook in 1910, but when the time came it made a spectacular fire."
- Quote by Margaret MacMillan

4. "3053Geography also gave Russia a rich choice of potential enemies."
- Quote by Margaret MacMillan

5. "As the American historian John Lewis Gaddis put it, it is like looking in a rearview mirror: if you only look back, you will land in the ditch, but it helps to know where you have come from and who else is on the road."
- Margaret MacMillan, Dangerous Games

6. "They should have remembered that famous saying of Bismarck: Preventive war is like committing suicide out of fear of death."
- Margaret MacMillan, The War That Ended Peace: The Road To 1914

7. "But the superiority of the British is that it is a matter of complete indifference to them if they appear to be stupid."
- Margaret MacMillan, The War That Ended Peace: The Road To 1914

8. "A menudo se usa la historia como una serie de cuentos morales para aumentar la solidaridad de grupo o, cosa más defendible, según mi punto de vista, para explicar el desarrollo de instituciones importantes como los parlamentos y conceptos como la democracia y de ese modo la enseñanza del pasado se ha convertido en algo fundamental a la hora de debatir la forma de inculcar y trasmitir valores. El peligro es que ese objetivo, que puede ser admirable, acabe por distorsionar la historia, ya sea convirtiéndola en un relato simplista en el cual sólo hay blanco y negro, o bien representándola como si todo tendiese hacia una sola dirección, ya sea el progreso humano o el triunfo de un grupo en particular. La historia explicada de este modo aplana la complejidad de la experiencia humana y no deja espacio para las distintas interpretaciones del pasado."
- Margaret MacMillan, The Uses and Abuses of History

9. "La historia es una forma de hacer valer la comunidad imaginada. Los nacionalistas, por poner un ejemplo, aseguran que la nación siempre ha existido en esa zona convenientemente vaga de la "niebla del tiempo"(...)En realidad, examinando cualquier grupo vemos que su identidad es un proceso y no algo fijo. Los grupos se definen y redefinen a sí mismos a lo largo del tiempo y como respueta a procesos internos, un despertar religios quizá, o a presiones externas. Si uno está oprimido y victimizado(...) esa situación se convierte en parte de la imagen que uno tiene de sí mismo. Y a veces incluso conduce a una competencia bastante indecorosa por el victimismo."
- Margaret MacMillan, The Uses and Abuses of History

10. "In a secular world, which is what most of us in Europe and North America live in, history takes on the role of showing us good and evil, virtues and vices. Religion no longer plays as important a part as it once did in setting moral standards and transmitting values. . . .History with a capital H is being called in to fill the void. It restores a sense not necessarily of a divine being but of something above and beyond human beings. It is our authority: it can vindicate us and judge us, and damn those who oppose us."
- Margaret MacMillan, The Uses and Abuses of History