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 important to understand the continuing, confused fascination with the Second World War. For most of us, the great unspoken question is how would we have behaved in the face of danger and when forced to make major moral choices.
The historical profession is nowhere famous for its tolerance, but there are not many countries where historians can expect to pay for their opinions with penal servitude or the firing squad.
One has to confront history honestly.
There must be people who remember World War II and the Holocaust who can help us get out of this rut.
I was 10 years old when my father was assassinated in 1968. Then, I had some sense of the sacrifices and hardships required of the families of a leader who was constantly in the news.
Nowadays, it is no longer possible to maintain that the Nazi-Soviet pact of 23 August 1939 was a fiction invented by bourgeois-imperialist enemies. Everyone has seen the film clips of Herr Ribbentrop landing in Moscow, and of Stalin smiling broadly as Ribbentrop and Molotov signed up side by side.
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