Even for the most excitable preacher, there was nothing inherently sinful about a waffle. Simon Schama More Quotes by Simon Schama More Quotes From Simon Schama 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 american end place ugly I am strongly of the opinion that chronology is very important. The great arc of time is what children are wired for. Simon Schama i-am great time children 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 teachers brave history 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 go endurance power religion History gives you insight of the same quality of truth as poetry or philosophy or a novel. Simon Schama you quality truth history 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 story small everything special It's not right to think about all of Jewish-German history as shrouded by the smoke of the crematorium. Simon Schama right think smoke history Jews can live their own life as Jews and yet be part of a different country. Simon Schama live own life country 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 you church way religion 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 feel body want religion 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 revolution politics faith war 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 who young promise The default mode of modern writing about art is to despise any notion of singularity as so much overheated genius-fetishism. Simon Schama about modern writing art 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 will design time 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 things know cricket study 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 old i-am never dance 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 myself reading I find it very hard to write about Jewish history. Simon Schama write find hard history
