Today's headlines and history's judgment are rarely the same.
Interpretation
The perception of current events often differs from how they are viewed in retrospect.
This quote by Condoleezza Rice emphasizes the gap between contemporary interpretation of events and their historical significance. It suggests that while news headlines capture the immediacy and novelty of current happenings, a deeper understanding and judgment come with time, allowing for a more nuanced evaluation that can differ significantly from initial reactions and opinions.
In practice
In a discussion about media bias, one might say, 'As Condoleezza Rice wisely noted, today's headlines and history's judgment are rarely the same.'
I think my father thought I might be president of the United States. I think he would've been satisfied with secretary of state. I'm a foreign policy person and to have a chance to serve my country as the nation's chief diplomat at a time of peril and consequence, that was enough.
What the United States has done is to be open to people who are fleeing tyranny, who are fleeing danger, but we have done it in a very careful way that has worked for us.
For the United States, supporting international development is more than just an expression of our compassion. It is a vital investment in the free, prosperous, and peaceful international order that fundamentally serves our national interest.
Today's headlines and history's judgment are rarely the same. If you are too attentive to the former, you will most certainly not do the hard work of securing the latter.
Does anybody think these people were just sitting around drinking tea?
Let me let you in on a little secret. There is no such thing as an international community. There are self-maximizing, self-interested states that will push their interests as far as possible.
It is like writing history with lightning and my only regret is that it is all so terribly true.
I prefer my history dead. Dead history is writ in ink, the living sort in blood.
Both my father and mother were survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto and the Nazi concentration camps. Apart from my parents, every family member on both sides was exterminated by the Nazis.
The revolution of Saint Domingo was taking its course. I saw that the whites could not endure, because they were divided and because they were overpowered by numbers; I congratulated myself that I was a black man.
If we trace the history of any nation backwards into the past, we come at last to a period of myths and traditions which eventually fade away into impenetrable darkness.
My original interest in the Nazi holocaust was personal. Both my father and mother were survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto and the Nazi concentration camps. Apart from my parents, every family member on both sides was exterminated by the Nazis.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.