Simon Schama Quotes

Powerful Simon Schama for Daily Growth

About Simon Schama

Simon Schama (born September 13, 1945) is an eminent British-Dutch historian, television personality, and art critic renowned for his dynamic storytelling and vivid prose. Born in London to Dutch Jewish parents, Schama spent his early childhood in Amsterdam before returning to the UK. His upbringing, marked by the shadows of World War II and the Holocaust, greatly influenced his scholarly pursuits and personal fascination with the intricacies of history and culture. Schama attended Oxford University where he studied history, earning a first-class degree in 1967. His academic journey continued at Cambridge, where he completed his Ph.D. in 1975, focusing on the French Revolution. This early work set the stage for Schama's enduring interest in revolutionary movements and their impact on society. Throughout his career, Schama has made significant contributions to historical understanding across various domains. His major works include "Dead Certainties: Unwarranted Speculations" (1991), a collection of essays exploring the tension between fact and interpretation in history; "The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age" (1987), a study of the Netherlands during its golden age; and "A History of Britain," a six-part television series that delves into British history from prehistoric times to the modern era. Schama's writings are characterized by their rich narrative style, deep cultural insights, and ability to make complex historical events accessible to a broad audience. His work has earned him numerous awards, including two Emmy Awards for his television series and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Schama continues to be an influential figure in academia and popular culture, captivating readers and viewers with his thought-provoking perspectives on history.

Interpretations of Popular Quotes

"History is not the past. It is the memory of the past."

The quote suggests that history isn't simply a recording or retelling of events that occurred in the past, but rather it is our interpretation, remembrance, and collective understanding of those events. This means that history is subjective to some extent because it relies on human perception and memory, which can be influenced by biases, perspectives, and emotions. Therefore, history serves as a reflection of how we remember and understand the past, rather than providing an objective, immutable account of it.

"Art is the only way to run away without leaving home."

This quote suggests that art serves as an escape, allowing individuals to explore new realms, ideas, or emotions, all within their own space. It implies that through artistic expression, one can transcend physical boundaries, venture into different worlds, and experience life in a myriad of ways, without actually leaving the comfort of their home. This metaphorical journey is a fundamental aspect of human creativity and connectivity, as it enables us to understand and express our diverse thoughts, feelings, and experiences.

"Landscape is the collective dream of a nation."

The quote by Simon Schama, "Landscape is the collective dream of a nation," implies that landscapes are more than mere geographical entities; they embody the cultural, historical, and emotional essence of a society. Landscapes, in this sense, represent shared ideals, values, memories, and aspirations of a nation. These visual environments reflect and shape our collective identity, shaping our perceptions and feelings about who we are as a people.

"To be modern is to have been contemporaneous with the French Revolution."

This quote by Simon Schama suggests that being "modern" means experiencing or living during a significant historical event, such as the French Revolution. The French Revolution marked a turning point in history, symbolizing political upheaval, the rise of democratic ideals, and the redefinition of power structures on a global scale. In other words, the concept of modernity encompasses the social, political, and cultural shifts that originated from or were profoundly influenced by this period. Thus, being "modern" means acknowledging and embodying these transformative ideas that have shaped our contemporary world.

"History does not belong to the dead; it belongs to the living, who, by selecting and interpreting their heritage, are in fact the authors of every new version of the past."

This quote by Simon Schama emphasizes that history is not a static entity owned by those who lived in the past, but rather a dynamic and evolving narrative shaped by the present. It suggests that the living individuals have the power to reinterpret historical events based on their own perspectives, values, and experiences. In essence, it means that every generation contributes to the ongoing construction of history, making it relevant and meaningful for contemporary society.

The most gloomy prognosis about Jewish life is that it will disappear between the two extremes of ultra-Orthodoxy on the one hand and total assimilation on the other. But those are very exaggerated scenarios.

- Simon Schama

Will, Other, Very, Exaggerated

In Mesopotamia or Egypt, for example, the monarch had a god-like religious status. But this is not the case in Judaism. So that notion that religion can go on, when all the markers of power and trappings of monarchy disappear, ultimately serves the endurance of Judaism very well.

- Simon Schama

Religious, Very, Had, Monarchy

The older I get, the more I want to do. It beats death, decay or golf in unfortunate trousers. Peace and quiet depress me.

- Simon Schama

Death, More, Unfortunate, Depress

We seem wired to grieve with greenery. Allowing the dead to dissolve into the earth, to become part of the cycle of the seasons, has, for millennia, held the promise of cheating mortality.

- Simon Schama

Seasons, Wired, Held, Cheating

Sculptures created from found materials like ice and thorns, driftwood, and even bleached kangaroo bones all presuppose that artistic design will yield to the cycles of time and climate, whether over an hour or a decade.

- Simon Schama

Decade, Thorns, Sculptures, Materials

By the end of the nineteenth century, the stereotype of the ugly American - voracious, preachy, mercenary, and bombastically chauvinist - was firmly in place in Europe.

- Simon Schama

Mercenary, Firmly, Voracious

The notion that religion can actually be something... attached to progressivism seems so bizarre. But all you have to say is that Abolition wouldn't have happened without it. The way in which African Americans managed to achieve a degree of self-determination was through the church.

- Simon Schama

Through, Abolition, Bizarre, Attached

You are not thinking hard enough if you are sleeping well. And you would have to be unhinged to take on a subject like the French Revolution, or Rembrandt, and not feel some trepidation. There is always the possibility that you will crash and burn, and the whole thing will be a horrible, vulgar, self-indulgent mess.

- Simon Schama

Feel, Some, Self-Indulgent, Rembrandt

I would want the British reader to feel that religion in America isn't an absurd thing - a sign of a pin head athwart a gigantic body.

- Simon Schama

Want, Sign, Reader, Pin

I actually think that history has fed off the restlessness of cyber space, of kind of the frantic, segmented nature of the way we lead our lives. People want to be connected.

- Simon Schama

Think, Fed, Lives, Cyber

The Jews invented a portable religion in the shape of the Bible, the Torah, and eventually the Talmud, and with other portable forms of writing. So it's now possible to carry the religion, that is embedded in that writing, away from the ruins of political and military power.

- Simon Schama

Other, Away, Talmud, Torah

America is truly special because it's founded on an idea. It's the ideological and philosophical equivalent of a formless God, in other words, you know? It's, again, the only great country in the world that it is formed out of words.

- Simon Schama

Country, Other, Equivalent, In Other Words

The default mode of modern writing about art is to despise any notion of singularity as so much overheated genius-fetishism.

- Simon Schama

Art, About, Despise, Singularity

The challenge for a nonfiction writer is to achieve a poetic precision using the documents of truth but somehow to make people and places spring to life as if the reader was in their presence.

- Simon Schama

Documents, Poetic, Using, Nonfiction

Jewish comedy doesn't come out of nothing. Jewish music doesn't come out of nothing... I don't want to be part of a story where Jews are just victims or bullies - and I'm not saying that's what the Israelis are.

- Simon Schama

Comedy, Nothing, Jews, Israelis

If someone asks me to go to speak at, say, Princeton, I might or might not go. But if someone asks me from Norman, Oklahoma, I certainly will go.

- Simon Schama

Will, Might, Certainly, Princeton

I do not want to be misunderstood that you need a dose of persecution in order, really, to have a sense of your identity. Otherwise, you know, there would be no American Jews. Even if you're not strictly, fiercely Orthodox, you commit yourselves to a community of memory.

- Simon Schama

Memory, American, Commit, Dose

The novelist's obligation to remake the sensuous texture of a vanished world is also the historian's. The strongest fiction writers often do deep research to make the thought and utterances of lost time credible.

- Simon Schama

Deep, Fiction Writers, Remake

Never crowd a pan with too many mushrooms. They give off an enormous amount of moisture. And there's nothing worse than a braised mushroom, other than a lot of braised mushrooms.

- Simon Schama

Give, Other, Amount, Pan

I am strongly of the opinion that chronology is very important. The great arc of time is what children are wired for.

- Simon Schama

Very, Wired, Chronology, Arc

Anyone can write an academic piece directed at other academics. To write something that delivers an argument and a gripping storyline to someone's granny or eight-year-old takes the highest quality of your powers.

- Simon Schama

Argument, Other, Directed, Storyline

I was conscious of being wordy as a child. I was a terrible talker. I memorised the Latin names of flowers at five; I was shown off as a freak. My father encouraged me to be wordier than I was: he'd been a street orator at the time of Mosley, and his ideal primary concert speech was Henry V's speech before Harfleur.

- Simon Schama

Father, Been, Before, Primary

In the early nineteenth century, with Enlightenment optimism soured by years of war and revolution, critics were skeptical of America's naive faith that it had reinvented politics.

- Simon Schama

Politics, Enlightenment, Skeptical

I did an audiobook for 'Rough Crossings,' which I thought was one of the best books I had published. But it was an absolute embarrassment to read it. All these horrible mucked-up bits of syntax, over-the-top adjectives. I found myself editing it while reading. Alert listeners will notice the difference.

- Simon Schama

Best, Thought, Rough, Adjectives

I would passionately make the case that the harder the times, the more we need things that aren't just about keeping our job and making a buck - important though those things are. Arts programming isn't some sort of add-on or ornamental luxury.

- Simon Schama

Some, About, Our, Programming

As a schoolboy, poetry seemed defined by preciousness. It was all very rarefied.

- Simon Schama

Very, Seemed, Schoolboy, Defined

The synagogues of late antiquity and the early medieval period were built around imagery: imagery of remembering the Temple, but also of the celestial zodiac, too.

- Simon Schama

Remembering, Period, Built, Celestial

History is admirably dangerous. It is not the soft option. Teachers need to be grown up and brave. Sensitivity is fine, but it stops at the door of honest narrative.

- Simon Schama

Door, Need, Narrative, Sensitivity

The difficulty with poetry is that it doesn't have the life that Shakespeare or Jane Austen have beyond the page. You can't make a costume drama out of it. There's no place for it to go except trapped inside its little book.

- Simon Schama

Book, Go, Trapped, Costume

It takes a perverse determination to drain that instinctive curiosity away and make history seem just remote, dead and disconnected from our contemporary reality. Conversely, it just takes skilful storytelling to recharge that connection to make the past come alive in our present.

- Simon Schama

Storytelling, Alive, Away, Disconnected

I understood when I was quite small that there were two special things about the Jews. That we'd endured for over 3,000 years despite everything that had been thrown at us, and that we had an extraordinarily dramatic story to tell.

- Simon Schama

Small, Tell, Been, Extraordinarily

Jewish history has been in my cultural DNA since I was a child growing up in post-war London. In the midst of that dark, gray, lamenting monochromatic world of the '50s, I had a sense that both Jewish and English history were full of color and light and animation.

- Simon Schama

Color, London, Been, Animation

The British who arrived in the United States in the eighteen-thirties and forties had imagined the young republic as a wide-eyed adolescent, socially ungainly and politically gauche, but with some hint of promise.

- Simon Schama

Some, United, United States, Adolescent

St. Paul was making it impossible to be Jewish and Christian at the same time. What is very striking about those early churches and communities is that you could be both. Under Paul, though, you absolutely couldn't.

- Simon Schama

Making, Very, Though, Communities

The history of the Jews has been written overwhelmingly by scholars of texts - understandably given the formative nature of the Bible and the Talmud. Seeing Jewish history through artifacts, architecture and images is still a young but spectacularly flourishing discipline that's changing the whole story.

- Simon Schama

Through, Been, Flourishing, Scholars

Passover takes place in the home rather than the synagogue and centers around an epic meal - the seder - so you remember Passover as storytelling, you remember it in food, and you remember it in the family.

- Simon Schama

Storytelling, Epic, Rather, Centers

The Elephantine papyri - written as some of the books of the Bible are being written - is true social and legal documentation, and to historians overwhelmingly powerful and moving, even when ostensibly about trivial things.

- Simon Schama

Bible, Some, Historians, Documentation

I felt New York was a big, more stylish, more metropolitan Golders Green. I was thrilled.

- Simon Schama

New, Stylish, Big, Thrilled

In the Einstein way, I can't believe in a universe that doesn't have some sort of prime mover, identical with all of created nature. I have a whole lot of a harder time with supposing the fine print of the Torah was a direct revelation.

- Simon Schama

Some, Revelation, Direct, Einstein

At 11, 12, I thought I was clumsy, ugly, a mess, an unappealing person, but I did have the gift of the gab. I had the school record at Haberdashers for consecutive detentions for simply speaking out of turn.

- Simon Schama

Gift, Thought, Ugly, Clumsy

Growing up in Britain as a rather loose Jew, the two things that didn't belong together were freedom and religious intensity. In America, they do. The Founding Fathers made a bet that if you didn't force everyone to profess religion in their own particular way, you could protect intellectual freedom, and religion would flourish.

- Simon Schama

Religious, Particular Way, Loose

Somehow, the words don't have any vitality, any life to them, unless I can feel it marking on a paper. That's how I start. Once I'm off, then I switch to the laptop. I think it would all just be prose if it started on a laptop - not that what I do is poetry.

- Simon Schama

Feel, Laptop, I Think, Marking

It was the Sephardi Jews who brought fish and chips to Britain, actually, believe it or not, from the Mediterranean world. Apart from actually eating and selling fish and chips, they were kind of debt enforcers.

- Simon Schama

Chips, Brought, Britain, Apart

History gives you insight of the same quality of truth as poetry or philosophy or a novel.

- Simon Schama

Truth, Insight, Same, Novel

I am passionately invested in the survival of Israel and everything Israel represents. But I am extremely critical of much of its policy. I believe that the occupation must end. And if it doesn't, it will end Israel. I'm not in favor of settlements.

- Simon Schama

Settlements, Occupation, Invested

I have this magpie instinct for the next glittering object. There are one or two things I know I can't write about, though: DIY, cricket, automobile repair. I could study it for a lifetime and not produce a word on the carburettor.

- Simon Schama

Repair, Study, Next, Object

I am somebody who has never been able to give up '60s habits. I am the inevitable old codger on the dance floor.

- Simon Schama

Give, Been, Inevitable, Floor

I am not very relaxed about bad reviews. But I am resilient. I grieve, curse and swear, put on loud music, and get on with the next job.

- Simon Schama

Next, Loud, Very, Swear

The Jewish story is the story of wandering. It is the story of extraordinary heterogeneous complication.

- Simon Schama

Extraordinary, Jewish, Complication

I used to have a monthly cookery column, and am a big cook, so that whole sense of connecting what one does with food to one's cultural identity has always been fascinating to me.

- Simon Schama

Big, Always, Been, Connecting

My mother was an awful cook, an exceptionally awful kosher cook, but I stayed kosher until I got to college, even though I'd long stopped believing in God.

- Simon Schama

College, Stopped, Though, Exceptionally

A generation without history is a generation that not only loses a nation's memory but loses a sense of what it's like to be inside a human skin.

- Simon Schama

Memory, Generation, Nation, Loses

Jewish history turns out not to be an either/or story - as in, either pure Judaism detached from its surroundings or else assimilation - but rather, for the vast majority, the adventure of living in between.

- Simon Schama

Living, Jewish, Rather, Detached

I wrote a staggeringly bad poem when I was 19 after a girlfriend dumped me. I seem to remember comparing her to a tarantula. It was all very E. J. Thribb of me.

- Simon Schama

Bad, Very, Wrote, Poem

From the very beginning, history wasn't content simply to be nostalgic fairytales; it wanted to make you think.

- Simon Schama

Beginning, Think, Very, Nostalgic

The Bible, for all its riches, is not a document of social history.

- Simon Schama

Bible, Social, Riches, Document

Jews have never, ever, ever wished to be separate, unless they were forced to be.

- Simon Schama

Never, Separate, Ever, Wished

Jews can live their own life as Jews and yet be part of a different country.

- Simon Schama

Country, Own, Part, Jews

Silence, this will surprise you not, isn't really a Jewish concept.

- Simon Schama

Surprise, Will, Concept, Jewish

I find it very hard to write about Jewish history.

- Simon Schama

Find, Very, About, Jewish

It's not right to think about all of Jewish-German history as shrouded by the smoke of the crematorium.

- Simon Schama

Think, Right, About, Smoke

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