We're our own dragons as well as our own heroes, and we have to rescue ourselves from ourselves.
Tom RobbinsRead
Hardly a pure science, history is closer to animal husbandry than it is to mathematics in that it involves selective breeding. The principal difference between the husbandryman and the historian is that the former breeds sheep or cows or such and the latter breeds (assumed) facts. The husbandryman uses his skills to enrich the future, the historian uses his to enrich the past. Both are usually up to their ankles in bullshit.
Interpretation
What this quote means
History is shaped by selective perspectives similar to how animals are bred, with both historians and husbandrymen dealing with complexities that can obscure the truth.
In this quote, Tom Robbins emphasizes the subjective nature of history, suggesting that historians, like husbandrymen, selectively curate their materials to craft narratives. While husbandrymen seek to improve livestock for future benefit, historians reinterpret past facts to provide insight, although both professions can be mired in misleading information or biases.
Themes
HistoryInterpretationTruthFactsSubjectivity
In practice
Example use cases
During a lecture on historical accuracy, you might quote Robbins to illustrate the challenges historians face.
More from Tom Robbins
All quotes →There are many things worth living for, a few things worth dying for, and nothing worth killing for.
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The unhappy person resents it when you try to cheer him up, because that means he has to stop dwelling on himself and start paying attention to the universe. Unhappiness is the ultimate form of self-indulgence. When you're unhappy, you get to pay a lot of attention to yourself. You get to take yourself oh so very seriously.
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I'm an outlaw, not a philosopher, but I know this much: there's meaning in everything, all things are connected, and a good champagne is a drink.' Bernard began to sing again. Timidly, Leigh-Cheri joined in. Between verses, they opened another bottle. The popping of its cork echoed throughout the great stone chamber. Of the three billion people on earth, only Bernard and Leigh-Cheri heard the popping of the cork and its echoes. Only Bernard and Leigh-Cheri passed out under the tablecloth.
Tom RobbinsRead
The Divine was beyond description, beyond knowing, beyond comprehension. To say that the Divine was Creation divided by Destruction was as close as one could come to definition. But the puny of soul, the dull of wit, weren't content with that. They wanted to hang a face on the Divine. They went so far as to attribute petty human emotions - anger, jealousy, etc - to it, not stopping to realize that if God were a being, even a supreme being, our prayers would have bored him to death long ago.
Tom RobbinsRead
On their sofas of spice and feathers, the concubines also slept fretfully. In those days the Earth was still flat, and people dreamed often of falling over edges.
Tom RobbinsRead
Similar quotes
All knowledge that is about human society, and not about the natural world, is historical knowledge, and therefore rests upon judgment and interpretation. This is not to say that facts or data are nonexistent, but that facts get their importance from what is made of them in interpretation… for interpretations depend very much on who the interpreter is, who he or she is addressing, what his or her purpose is, at what historical moment the interpretation takes place.
Edward SaidRead
The American lives even more for his goals, for the future, than the European. Life for him is always becoming, never being.
Albert EinsteinRead
He despised his body for its boring hungers, reflex anger; its petty, obliterating rage. But now he'd become detached. He regarded his body with a tender regret. It was the thing his spirit had to haul.
Louise ErdrichRead
The problem to be faced is: how to combine loyalty to one's own tradition with reverence for different traditions.
Abraham Joshua HeschelRead
To the real question, How does it feel to be a problem? I answer seldom a word.
W. E. B. Du BoisRead
We need criminals to identify ourselves with, to secretly envy and to stoutly punish. They do for us the forbidden, illegal things we wish to do.
Karl A. MenningerRead