historians-from-poland

"The difference between a referendum and a plebiscite is a fine one. Both pertain to collective decisions made by the direct vote of all qualified adults. The referendum, which derives from Swiss practice, involves an issue that is provisionally determined in advance, but that is then 'referred' for a final decision by the whole electorate."

"All the nations that ever lived have left their footsteps in the sand. The traces fade with every tide, the echoes grow faint, the images are fractured, the human material is atomized and recycled. But if we know where to look, there is always a remnant, a remainder, an irreducible residue."

"That the United Kingdom will collapse is a foregone conclusion. Sooner or later, all states do collapse, and ramshackle, asymmetric dynastic amalgamations are more vulnerable than cohesive nation-states. Only the 'how' and the 'when' are mysteries of the future. An exhaustive study of the many pillars on which British power and prestige were built — ranging from the monarchy, the Royal Navy and the Empire to the Protestant Ascendancy, the Industrial Revolution, Parliament and Sterling — indicated that all without exception were in decline; some were already defunct, others seriously diminished or debilitated; it suggests that the last act may come sooner rather than later.110 Nothing implies that the end will necessarily be violent; some political organisms dissolve quietly. All it means is that present structures will one day disappear, and be replaced by something else."

"The immediate future may be determined by a race between the United Kingdom and the EU over which beats the other to a major crisis."

"Reconstructing the past is rather like translating poetry. It can be done, but never exactly. Whether one deals with prehistoric recipes, colonial settlements, or medieval music, it needs great imagination and restraint if the twin perils of artless authenticity and clueless empathy are to be avoided."

"Theorists of propaganda have identified five basic rules: 1. The rule of simplification: reducing all data to a simple confrontation between 'Good and Bad', 'Friend and Foe'. 2. The rule of disfiguration: discrediting the opposition by crude smears and parodies. 3. The rule of transfusion: manipulating the consensus values of the target audience for one's own ends. 4. The rule of unanimity: presenting one's viewpoint as if it were the unanimous opinion of all right-thinking people: drawing the doubting individual into agreement by the appeal of star-performers, by social pressure, and by 'psychological contagion'. 5. The rule of orchestration: endlessly repeating the same messages in different variations and combinations."

"Arguably, the only fruit of the Crusades kept by the Christians was the apricot."

"One has to put aside the popular notion that language and culture are endlessly passed on from generation to generation, rather as if 'Scottishness' or 'Englishness' were essential constituents of some national genetic code. If this were so, it would never be possible to forge new nations — like the United States of America or Australia — from diverse ethnic elements."

"On reading somewhere that the Welsh name for 'England', Lloegr, meant 'the Lost Land', I fell for the fancy, imagining what a huge sense of loss and forgetting the name expresses. A learned colleague has since told me that my imagination had outrun the etymology. Yet as someone brought up in English surroundings, I never cease to be amazed that everywhere which we now call 'England' was once not English at all."

"It is indeed the duty of historians to stress the contrast between the standards of the past and the standards of the present. Some fulfil that duty on purpose, others by accident."

"When Henryk Sienkiewicz set Poland alight with his tales of chivalry, it was Cossack life in 17th-century Poland that stirred his readers. Just as many great 'Englishmen' turn out to be Irishmen or Scots, so many great 'Poles', like Mickiewicz, Słowacki, or Kościuszko, turn out to be Lithuanians."

"If enough people in society can be convinced that history is governed by scientific laws: that Soviet-style Socialism is the inevitable product of historical progress: and that the Soviet Union embodies all the finest socialist ideals of peace, equality, and justice, then rational people should be incapable of defying the rule of the Soviet government and its chosen allies."

"Historical knowledge does not need artificial protection. ... The truth about the past can only be established and strengthened by the clash of wisdom and absurdity. If absurdity is banned by the law, wisdom too is diminished."

"For more than five hundred years the cardinal problem in defining Europe has centred on the inclusion or exclusion of Russia."

"The debased coinage of his reign bore his initials, ICR: Iohannes Casimirus Rex. These were taken to stand for Initium Calamitatum Reipublicae, the Beginning of the Republic's Catastrophes."

"The formula Muscovy + Ukraine = Russia does not feature in the Russians’ own version of their history; but it is fundamental."

"There are shades of barbarism in twentieth-century Europe which would once have amazed the most barbarous of barbarians. At a time when the instruments of constructive change had outstripped anything previously known, Europeans acquiesced in a string of conflicts which destroyed more human beings than all past convulsions put together."

"Historians usually focus their attention on the past of countries that still exist, writing hundreds and thousands of books on British history, French history, German history, Russian history, American history, Chinese history, Indian history, Brazilian history or whatever. Whether consciously or not, they are seeking the roots of the present, thereby putting themselves in danger of reading history backwards. As soon as great powers arise, whether the United States in the twentieth century or China in the twenty-first, the call goes out for offerings on American History or Chinese History, and siren voices sing that today’s important countries are also those whose past is most deserving of examination, that a more comprehensive spectrum of historical knowledge can be safely ignored."

"They wanted peace and they fought for thirty years to be sure of it. They did not learn then, and have not learned since, that war only breeds war."

"Contrary to some expectations, Europe's brush with modern power revived its Christian culture. The 'Railway Age' was also the age of muscular Christianity."

"The most obvious fact of the Soviet collapse is that it happened through natural causes. The Soviet Union was not, like ancient Rome, invaded by barbarians or, like the Polish Commonwealth, partitioned by rapacious neighbours, or, like the Habsburg Empire, overwhelmed by the strains of a great war. It was not, like the Nazi Reich, defeated in a fight to the death. It died because it had to, because the grotesque organs of its internal structure were incapable of providing the essentials of life. In a nuclear age, it could not, like its tsarist predecessor, solve its internal problems by expansion. Nor could it suck more benefit from the nations whom it had captured. It could not tolerate the partnership with China which once promised a global future for communism; it could not stand the oxygen of reform; so it imploded. It was struck down by the political equivalent of a coronary, more massive than anything that history affords."

"As a historian I refuse to recognize an epochal boundary before the fact."

"I have made it a habit not to speculate over the psychological state of our elected leaders."

"Every person is responsible for his deeds. Christians in the Catholic Church, and not just in Poland, pray for forgiveness for sins of thought and deed, including also the sin of failing to offer help, and of indifference toward evil. Not just wicked deeds or words but also passivity and not getting involved in good deeds are sins. Young people should arrange their lives so that they are content with themselves. And they can achieve satisfaction by knowing that they have acted in a just manner."

"From a material perspective, it might not always pay to be honest, but from a moral perspective, it's always the right thing. That applies to a frail person as well as a criminal. This was my guiding principle - both when I was in captivity and after I was released."

"Enmity is incomparably easier than reconciliation. After all, it happens that we feel almost friendly towards an enemy, being able to shift the responsibility for all our misfortunes to him. […] And reconciliation? How can we live amongst the rubble? How to rid oneself of the memory of wrongs? How can we forget the suffering which filled a victim's entire life? […] Reconciliation requires reflection, moral sensitivity, conscience, great spiritual effort. It requires parting from delusions, from the mythology of hatred and seeing – in the old enemy and in oneself – a person under the same heaven."

"Fortunately, Poland today complies with the conventions of the civilized world. If chauvinistic or extremist voices are heard anywhere in the world they have to be denounced loudly. We must have the courage to stand against what assaults our sense of honesty and justice. Today, personal courage is necessary to surmount the fear of publicly addressing unpopular subjects. This is why it is necessary to teach young people that it is important to stand by their principles even if there are moments of pain and hardship. We must be careful not to allow any deviation to counteract certain positive patterns of normal behaviour."

"I, a Polish Catholic, belong to a generation that has personal experience of helplessness in the face of evil. I also spent seven months in Auschwitz. Finally, we are linked by an enduring collective feeling of shame for Europeans and for their passiveness and the failure of the European and American tactics of the time."

"I can say, that no man can judge his own life. So no man can say that he could have done more. The older I get, the greater the certitude I have, that it is the correct, sincere answer. It is possible to expect courage from people and even heroism. But it is necessary to understand the simple fact that they are people."

"It's worth being honest, although it doesn't always pay off. It pays off to be dishonest, but it isn't worth it."

"Priorities, which clearly point out that at the end of the 20th century, as well as at the beginning of the 21st one, the question we will have to ask and answer is the following: in what way we can further contribute to solving such a difficult problem as the conflict prevention in its regional dimension."

"For most of us, concentration camps and extermination camps are the culmination of the persecution of the Jews, a devastating symbol of the Nazi regime and the Holocaust. Much more shocking, in my eyes, however, is the calm and calculated origin of the tragedy that was soon to take concrete form in Auschwitz and other extermination camps at a convivial lunch-time meeting at Wannsee in Berlin on 20 January 1942, a meeting that had already come to a close by early afternoon of the same day. The events that took place in those few hours, however, represented an unprecedented case of meticulously organized mass extermination of millions of victims, the birth of a terrifying idea thought up by the minds of educated people in an ostensibly civilized European country with long traditions."

"Zionism is as old as the Babylonian Exile, which began in 586BCE. Separation from the Land of Israel as they were being led into captivity by their conquerors rested crushingly upon the spirits of the Jewish exiles; a longing for the homeland consumed them. Turning in the direction of Judah, they then took an awesome vow: "If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand lose its cunning. Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I remember thee not; if I set not Jerusalem above my chiefest joy" (Psalms 137:5-6)."

"Jews have received their tempering from an unflinching realism learned for a high fee in the school of life; they have always felt the need of fortifying their spirits with the armor of laughter against the barbs of the world."

"First you laugh at a Jewish joke or quip. Then, against your will, you suddenly fall silent and thoughtful. And that is because Jews are so frequently jesting philosophers. A hard life has made them realists, realists without illusion."

"Folklore is a true and unguarded portrait, for where art may be selective, may conceal, may gloss over defects and even prettify, folk art is always revealing, always truthful in the sense that it is spontaneous expression."

"Of all the astonishing experiences of the widely dispersed Jewish people none was more extraordinary than that concerning the Khazars."

"One of the profoundest religious changes effected by the synagogue almost immediately upon its establishment twenty-five centuries ago was to bring communion with God directly and easily to the the individual worshiper."

"We mustn’t let our hands be bound by commitments to third parties who do not meet their own obligations."

"If in so many places we are witness to conflicts that entail the death of thousands of people and humanitarian dramas, this happens as a rule due to a failure to observe fundamental human rights. Entire communities and nations are denied influence over political decisions. Power without control is in most cases, corrupt and self-loving, incapable of lifting countries out of underdevelopment and poverty."

"The times of the peace dividend following the end of the Cold War are over."

"We do not want to diminish the achievements of others, but we want (...) others to remember that freedom began in Poland."

"Poland seeks European solidarity notably by the deepening of the integration process and among other things by the deepening of the principle of solidarity between nations."

"We are witnessing the rebirth of nationalist ideology which violates human rights and international law under the cover of humanitarian slogans about protecting minorities. We recognize this all too well from the 1930s."

"Communism finished in Poland 25 years ago, on 4th June 1989. We tore down the Iron Curtain of propaganda and lies to be able to live in the truth. We tore down the Iron Curtain which the authorities of the People’s Republic used to hide behind, in order to build a democracy, a system where authorities are held responsible before the citizens. On that day, for the first time, elections were no propagandist fiction but the making of a real choice."

"Everybody knows that voters dislike pay increases for politicians, and they enjoy it when money is taken away from politicians."

"My main message will be that perhaps the United Nations should be reformed to make the institution capable of addressing the threats that really exist today. I think blocking the Security Council on Ukraine is a token, a symptom, of the general weakness of the U.N."

"We need to think how not to respond only to the crisis in Ukraine, not to extinguish the political, economic and military fire, but to start systematically support the modernization of Ukraine, to help it and itself to realize national goals."

"The wish for freedom is contagious, that's why all tyrants fear it. Freedom seen from close up inspires human strivings. Its triumphant march began in Poland."

"We have to be consistent and patient with regard to our Russia policy because the stability of Russian strategic policy is a challenge to us and to the European Union, where governments change much more often than in Russia and where there are different views on Russia. The further from the east, the lesser Russia is perceived as a threat."