QuoteProject
God cannot alter the past, though historians can.
Samuel Butler
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

This quote suggests that while divine influence cannot change history, humans have the power to reinterpret and present it.

Samuel Butler’s quote highlights a fundamental distinction between the immutable nature of the past and the subjective interpretation of history. It implies that while events that have occurred cannot be changed by any higher power, historians and individuals possess the ability to frame and narrate those events in different ways. This reflects the idea that our understanding of history is often influenced by perspective, bias, and the context in which it is analyzed.

Themes

HistoryInterpretationPastTruthPerception

In practice

Example use cases

This quote can be used in a lecture on the subjectivity of historical narratives.

More from Samuel Butler

Belief like any other moving body follows the path of least resistance.
Samuel ButlerRead
To know God better is only to realize how impossible it is that we should ever know him at all. I know not which is more childish to deny him, or define him.
Samuel ButlerRead
Academic and aristocratic people live in such an uncommon atmosphere that common sense can rarely reach them.
Samuel ButlerRead
An apology for the devil: it must be remembered that we have heard one side of the case. God has written all the books.
Samuel ButlerRead
Young people have a marvelous faculty of either dying or adapting themselves to circumstances.
Samuel ButlerRead
People care more about being thought to have taste than about being thought either good, clever or amiable.
Samuel ButlerRead

Similar quotes

What's the go of that? What's the particular go of that?
James Clerk MaxwellRead
What a chimaera then is man, what a novelty, what a monster, what chaos, what a subject of contradiction, what a prodigy! Judge of all things, yet an imbecile earthworm; depository of truth, yet a sewer of uncertainty and error; pride and refuse of the universe. Who shall resolve this tangle?
Blaise PascalRead
Dark, dark! The horror of darkness, like a shroud, wraps me and bears me on through mist and cloud.
SophoclesRead
No philosopher understands his predecessors until he has re-thought their thought in his own contemporary terms.
P. F. StrawsonRead
The momentous thing in human life is the art of winning the soul to good or evil.
Francis BaconRead
From a Buddhist point of view, emotions are not real. As an actor, I manufacture emotions. They're a sense of play. But real life is the same. We're just not aware of it.
Richard GereRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.