Born with blue spectacles, you would think the world was blue and never be conscious of the existence of the distorting glass.
T. E. HulmeRead
No history can be a faithful mirror. If it were, it would be as long and as dull as life itself. It must be a selection, and, being a selection, must inevitably be biased.
Interpretation
What this quote means
History is subjective and cannot fully reflect reality without bias.
T. E. Hulme's quote highlights the inherent bias in historical narratives, suggesting that no account of the past can faithfully capture the entirety of events. Instead, history is a curated selection of experiences that inevitably favors particular perspectives, making it flawed and limited in its representation of reality.
Themes
HistoryBiasTruthSelectionPerspective
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a lecture about historiography to emphasize the subjective nature of historical writing.
More from T. E. Hulme
All quotes →All national histories are partisan and designed to give us a good conceit of ourselves.
T. E. HulmeRead
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