In the long run, Europe will certainly move toward unification. But it will be a process of push and pull, and there will be resistance. – Norman Davies
Myth-making is absolutely necessary to create the simplified images that people live off. – Norman Davies
One might have thought that 70 years was time enough to work out what really happened in 1939. It isn’t the case. Misunderstandings and misinformation abound. – Norman Davies
Any historian worth their salt should be aware of wars, conflicts, catastrophes. They happen. This is part of the panorama. – Norman Davies
I find myself sick to death, tired of arguing about details with people who don’t know basic facts. – Norman Davies
The idea that historians write the definitive version of something that will last for all time is less current than it used to be. – Norman Davies
Poland in the 1990s saw a surge of unrestrained, American-style capitalism. With millions of Poles living in the U.S.A., the defeat of communism led many to aim for a lifestyle derivative of Chicago or Detroit. – Norman Davies
States seem to have a natural life cycle, and anything can occur to change them into something else, and that something might be no bad thing. – Norman Davies
Serenity is the balance between good and bad, life and death, horrors and pleasures. Life is, as it were, defined by death. If there wasn’t death of things, then there wouldn’t be any life to celebrate. – Norman Davies
Traditionally, historians thought in terms of invasions: the Celts took over the islands, then the Romans, then the Anglo-Saxons. It now seems much more likely that the resident population doesn’t change as much as thought. The people stay put but are reculturalized by some new dominant culture. – Norman Davies
I always needle a bit when people say I’m a champion of the Poles, because I’ve always had a very multinational view of Poland. – Norman Davies
The last years of fading communism provided an ideal environment for Poland’s Catholic Church, which acted as an umbrella for dissenters of all sorts. – Norman Davies
Our mental maps are distorted by who are the ‘winners’ of history and who are the powers of today. – Norman Davies
The historical profession is nowhere famous for its tolerance, but there are not many countries where historians can expect to pay for their opinions with penal servitude or the firing squad. – Norman Davies
Only by painting the great panorama of history, can the great history-reading public be entertained or satisfied. – Norman Davies
It’s our vanity that makes us think that what forms part of our world today must be stable and secure. – Norman Davies
The Euro Sceptics are the English National Party in disguise, and they have poor old David Cameron over a barrel. – Norman Davies
The E.U. is an organization that was created after the Second World War for calming down the nationalism of member states, and it did so very successfully. – Norman Davies
Every austerity measure that Cameron and George Osborne make is being presented in Scotland as the English starving us. – Norman Davies
Nearly all interested parties think I write too shortly on the subjects that interest them most. – Norman Davies
Each side tries to legitimize their aims by appealing to history, sometimes selectively choosing episodes and other times just by inventing history. – Norman Davies
I do belong to the club which doesn’t see a distinction between academic history and popular history. – Norman Davies
History must give the Poles the principal credit for bringing the Soviet bloc to its knees. – Norman Davies
It’s the historian’s job not to ridicule the myths, but to show the difference between myth and reality. – Norman Davies
It’s unimaginable to meet a Pole or a German who does not know about the history of their country. But lots of English people don’t know the difference between Britain and England. – Norman Davies
Bulgaria was the only Axis country to deflect insistent German demands for the deportation of its Jews. – Norman Davies
