An apology offered and, equally important, received is a step towards reconciliation and, sometimes, recompense. Without that process, hurts can rankle and fester and erupt into their own hatreds and wrongdoings.
Margaret MacmillanRead
How can even the best novelist or playwright invent someone like Augustus Caesar or Catherine the Great, Galileo or Florence Nightingale? How can screenwriters create better action stories or human dramas than exist, thousand upon thousand, throughout the many centuries of recorded history?
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects on the limitations of creative imagination compared to the remarkable characters and stories found in history.
Margaret Macmillan suggests that no fiction can compete with the extraordinary lives and stories of historical figures like Augustus Caesar and Florence Nightingale. The richness of human experience, filled with unique characters and profound events, provides a deeper and more compelling narrative than any story that can be crafted by a novelist or playwright. This highlights the power of history and the amazing drama that has unfolded over time, which serves as a reminder of the complexity of human existence.
Themes
HistoryCreativityStorytellingHuman ExperiencesArt
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about the importance of historical knowledge in storytelling.
More from Margaret Macmillan
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War is a crucial, deeply ingrained part of human history. It has to be understood.
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There was that argument that if we had more women in positions of authority, the world would be a nicer place. And then we got Golda Meir, Margaret Thatcher, Sirimavo Bandaranaike, Indira Gandhi. When women become acclimatised to war, they can become every bit as ruthless as men.
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Theodore Roosevelt's policy to build a two-ocean navy confirmed that the old-style isolationism of the founders had not survived the modern, increasingly globalized world.
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If we don't take responsibility for each other, it seems to me the future is going to be even bleaker.
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