In apartments and cottages, on the street and in the train... I listen... More and more, I turn into one large ear, always turning to another person.
Svetlana AlexievichRead
There is this tradition, stretching back to Tacitus and Plutarch, that history belongs to the heroes, the emperors. But I grew up among simple people, and their stories just shattered me. It was painful that no one but me was listening to them.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote highlights the importance of the stories of ordinary people, contrasting them with historical narratives dominated by heroes and emperors.
Svetlana Alexievich reflects on the often overlooked narratives of everyday individuals in history, emphasizing that while traditional history focuses on great leaders and heroes, it is the stories of common people that reveal deeper human experiences and emotions. Her upbringing among these 'simple people' opened her eyes to their struggles and resilience, making her acutely aware of the pain that comes from their stories being unheard and unrecognized.
Themes
HistoryStoriesOrdinary PeopleEmpathyNarrative
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion on historical narratives at a literature conference.
More from Svetlana Alexievich
All quotes →The subjects I wanted to write about - the mystery of the human soul, evil - didn't interest newspapers, and news reporting bored me.
Svetlana AlexievichRead
'Women's' war has its own colors, its own smells, its own lighting, and its own range of feelings. There are no heroes and incredible feats; there are simply people who are busy doing inhumanly human things.
Svetlana AlexievichRead
There is no need to give in to the compromise that totalitarian regimes always count on.
Svetlana AlexievichRead
I've been searching for a genre that would be most adequate to my vision of the world to convey how my ear hears and my eyes see life. I tried this and that, and finally, I chose a genre where human voices speak for themselves. But I don't just record a dry history of events and facts; I'm writing a history of human feelings.
Svetlana AlexievichRead
From the point of view of art, the butcher and the victim are equal as people. You need to see the people.
Svetlana AlexievichRead
Similar quotes
History is about great forces, yes, but also about contingency.
Margaret MacmillanRead
Much of how Americans have always understood their history, culture, and identity depends on positioning Europe as the 'other,' as that 'old world' against which they define themselves.
Linda ColleyRead
Negroes could be sold - actually sold as we sell cattle, with no reference to calves or bulls or recognition of family. It was a nasty business. The white South was properly ashamed of it and continually belittled and almost denied it. But it was a stark and bitter fact.
W. E. B. Du BoisRead
The Negro was freed and turned loose as a penniless, landless, naked, ignorant laborer. Ninety-nine per cent were field hands and servants of the lowest class.
W. E. B. Du BoisRead
The death of Churchill at 90 was one of those watershed moments in which the obituary rises to a special calling beyond the sharing of remembered times. It gave an older generation a rare opportunity to explain something of itself to its children.
Walter CronkiteRead
The great bulk of the legal voters of the South were men who owned no slaves; their homes were generally in the hills and poor country; their facilities for educating their children, even up to the point of reading and writing, were very limited; their interest in the contest was very meagre--what there was, if they had been capable of seeing it, was with the North; they too needed emancipation.
Ulysses S. GrantRead