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.
Norman DaviesRead
Transience is one of the fundamental characteristics both of the human condition and of the political order.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote emphasizes the impermanence of both human life and political structures.
Norman Davies highlights the concept of transience, suggesting that both human existence and the systems of governance we create are inherently temporary. This reflection on the fleeting nature of life and politics encourages us to recognize and accept change as an inevitable aspect of our reality.
Themes
TransienceImpermanenceHuman ConditionPoliticsChange
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about the nature of life, I would quote this to highlight the necessity of adaptation.
More from Norman Davies
All quotes βNowadays, 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.
Norman DaviesRead
Why are some things remembered and others forgotten? That is the theme I want to pursue about the Second World War.
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Our mental maps are distorted by who are the 'winners' of history and who are the powers of today.
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One might have thought that 70 years was time enough to work out what really happened in 1939. It isn't the case. Misunderstandings and misinformation abound.
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I wanted to produce a book that would demonstrate not only the rich diversity of people who answered to Anders's command but also the extraordinary variety of their experiences and emotions: from death to despair, fear and longings and eventually to hope.
Norman DaviesRead
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Liberty is the most jealous and exacting mistress that can beguile the brain and soul of man. She will have nothing from him who will not give her all. She knows that his pretended love serves but to betray. But when once the fierce heat of her quenchless, lustrous eyes have burned into the victim's heart, he will know no other smile but hers.
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I know not what to call this, nor will I urge that it is a secret, overruling decree, that hurries us on to be the instruments of our own destruction, even though it be before us, and that we rush upon it with our eyes open.
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