Norman Davies Quotes & Sayings

Reconstructing the past is rather like translating poetry. It can be done, but never exactly. — Norman Davies

Only a Christian culture could have produced a Voltaire or a Nietzsche. I do not believe that the culture of Europe could survive the complete disappearance of the Christian Faith. — Norman Davies

To make his point, Ivan staged a sensational demonstration. Some time before Christmas he had arrested two Lithuanians employed in the Moscow Kremlin. He charged them with plotting to poison him. The accusations against Jan Lukhomski and Maciej the Pole did not sound very credible; but their guilt or innocence was hardly relevant. They were held in an open cage on the frozen Moskva River for all the world to see; and on the eve of the departure of Ivan's envoy to Lithuania, they were burned alive in their cage.50 As the ice melted under the fierce heat of the fire and the heavy iron cage sank beneath the water, taking its carbonized occupants down in a great hiss of steam, one could have well imagined that something was being said about Lithuania's political future. — Norman Davies

Arguably, the only fruit of the Crusades kept by the Christians was the apricot. — Norman Davies

He might be better considered as an exponent of Tartar financial, military, and political methods, who used the shifting alliances of khans and princes to replace the Tartar yoke with a Muscovite one. In his struggle with the Golden Horde, whose hegemony he definitively rejected after 1480, his closest ally was the Khan of the Crimea, who helped him to attack the autonomy of his fellow Christian principalities to a degree that the Tartars had never attempted. From the Muscovite point of view, which later enjoyed a monopoly, 'Ivan the Great' was the restorer of 'Russian' hegemony. From the viewpoint of the Novgorodians or the Pskovians he was the Antichrist, the destroyer of Russia's best traditions. When he came to write his will, he described himself, as his father had done, as 'the much-sinning slave of God'. — Norman Davies

Although the rival cereals of rye, barley,oats, buckwheat and millet have continued to exist in Europe, the triumphal march of king wheat was uncontestable — Norman Davies

We have survived the "Death of God" and the "Death of Man". We will surely survive "the Death of History" ... and the death of post-modernism. — Norman Davies

*NB. Carlos III of Spain, Carlo I of Parma, Carlo VIII of Naples and Carlo V of Sicily were the same man. — Norman Davies

NOMISMA, MEANING 'COIN', was used by both Greeks and Romans. Our own word 'money' derives, via the French monnaie, from the Latin moneta, meaning the mint, where coins are struck. (In early Rome the mint was situated on the Capitoline Hill in the temple of Juno Moneta.) — Norman Davies

As from the 1490s, the double-headed eagle began to appear as the symbol of state in Moscow as in Vienna, as indeed in Constantinople. — Norman Davies

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. This — Norman Davies

Every 30 seconds, it transmitted portions of [a Chopin Polonaise] to tell the world that the capital was still in Polish hands. Angered by the unexpected setback, the German High Command decided to pound the stubborn citadel into submission. In round-the-clock raids, bombers knocked out flourmills, gasworks, power plants and reservoirs, then sowed the residential areas with incendiaries. One witness, passing scenes of carnage, enumerated the horrors: 'Everywhere corpses, wounded humans, dead horses . . . and hastily-dug graves.' . . . Finally food ran out, and famished Poles, as one man put it, 'cut off flesh as soon as a horse fell, leaving only the skeleton.' On September 28, Warsaw Radio replaced the polonaise with a funeral dirge.15 — Norman Davies

The Muslim Era of Hegira, which marks the flight of the Prophet from Mecca, corresponds to Friday, 16 July AD 622. — Norman Davies

Discord among the ex-Soviet nationalities was fuelling an ugly brand of Russian nationalism. Voices in Moscow called for the re-conquest of Russia's 'near abroad'. For after Abkhazia, there waited several further targets for Russian intervention, including Tatarstan and Chechenia, and other non-Russian lands within the Russian Federation. Sooner or later, Russia would be forced to choose between its new-style democracy and its old-style imperialism. — Norman Davies

The United Kingdom is nearing its end. — Norman Davies

The big question about the hunter-gatherers, therefore, does not seem to be 'How did they progress towards the higher level of an agricultural and politicised society?' but 'What persuaded them to abandon the secure, well-provided and psychologically liberating advantages of their primordial lifestyle?'.1 — Norman Davies

[The Poles] will die for their country; but few will work for it. — Norman Davies

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. — Norman Davies

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. — Norman Davies

The title 'Lord of All-Rus' did not possess much basis either in history or in current reality. It came into the same category as that whereby the kings of England laid claim to France. In the 1490s, two-and-a-half centuries after all traces of a united Kievan Rus' had been destroyed, it had the same degree of credibility that the king of France might have enjoyed if, in his struggle with the German Empire, he had proclaimed himself 'Lord of all the Franks'. By that time, it conflicted with the separate identity that the 'Ruthenes' of Lithuania had assumed from the 'Russians' of Moscow. Indeed, it all seemed sufficiently unreal for the Lithuanians to accept it as a small price to pay for Ivan's good humour. They were not to know it, but they were conceding the ideological cornerstone of territorial ambitions that would be pursued for 500 years. — Norman Davies

The Fascist utopia, like that of the Communists, was false, and generated immense suffering. But there were those who dreamed it sincerely. — Norman Davies

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. — Norman Davies

Culture is something that must grow. You cannot build a tree; you can only plant it, and care for it, and wait for it to mature ... — Norman Davies

wars can be traced to a scuffle between a man and a boy, both of whom summon aid to their respective sides. — Norman Davies

Grain prices in France, for example, where the supply of coin was relatively scarce, were over seven times higher in 1600 than in 1500. — Norman Davies

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. — Norman Davies

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. — Norman Davies

The Terror-Famine of 1932-33 was a dual-purpose by product of collectivization, designed to suppress Ukrainian nationalism and the most important concentration of prosperous peasants at one throw. — Norman Davies

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. — Norman Davies

An ambassador', quipped Sir Henry Wootton, 'is an honest man sent to lie abroad for the good of his country. — Norman Davies

By 1939 the Gulag was the largest employer in Europe. — Norman Davies

Also in 1492, and also for the first time, the 'new Constantinople - Moscow' may have been given its more familiar label of 'the Third Rome'. — Norman Davies

The official ideology [of Poland] is Marxism-Leninism, which no one openly admits to believing. For Marx expressed the German view, and Lenin the Russian one, and the meeting of these particular minds has always spelled Polish ruin. — Norman Davies

the Entente Powers, far from aiding Poland, regarded her activities with irritation. Poland won her independence for twenty years by her own efforts under the leadership of Pilsudski. — Norman Davies

Most Poles are by temperament 'agin'. — Norman Davies