They say you can't study Kabbalah until you are at least 40 years old. You know why? You have to have experienced at least one generation making the same mistakes as the previous one.
David MametRead
You can't write about history without writing about politics at some point. History is about movements of people. 'What is criminality and what is government' is a theme that runs through every history.
Interpretation
History and politics are interconnected, as historical narratives often reflect political movements and power dynamics.
David Mamet emphasizes the inseparable link between history and politics, asserting that any exploration of historical events must inevitably encounter political themes. He suggests that history is fundamentally about human movements and societal shifts, with questions of governance and morality intertwined throughout the narrative of our past.
In practice
This quote can be used in a lecture about the influence of politics on historical events.
They say you can't study Kabbalah until you are at least 40 years old. You know why? You have to have experienced at least one generation making the same mistakes as the previous one.
My alma mater is the Chicago Public Library. I got what little educational foundation I got in the third-floor reading room, under the tutelage of a Coca-Cola sign.
You know, young actors say all the time, 'Should I use my own life experience?' And my response is, 'What choice do you have?'
It's hard for a Jew of my generation, an American Jew, who is philo-Zionistic, not to romanticize Israel.
Every reiteration of the idea that nothing matters debases the human spirit.
The subject of drama is The Lie. At the end of the drama THE TRUTH -- which has been overlooked, disregarded, scorned, and denied -- prevails. And that is how we know the Drama is done.
There are some places where history just grabs you by the jugular. This is one of them.
The epic story of the West is the development in the 19th century of a mass prosperity the world had never seen and its near-disappearance in one nation after another in the 20th.
No book about Soviet sacrifice was as strong as the women's stories I heard as a child.
In the Middle Ages, cathendrals and convents burned like tinder; imagining a medieval story without a fire is like imagining a World War II movie in the Pacific without a fighter plane shot down in flames.
History isn't really about the past - settling old scores. It's about defining the present and who we are.
It is a fair summary of history to say that the safeguards of liberty have been forged in controversies involving not very nice people.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.