“The distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”
“Without forgiveness, there is no future.”
“I don't think the human mind can comprehend the past and the future. They are both just illusions that can manipulate you into thinking theres some kind of change.”
“There is nothing like a dream to create the future.”
“Rien ne vaut un rêve pour créer l’avenir.”
“History is a set of lies agreed upon.”
“History is an argument without end.”
“The apocryphal historians multiply. There is such a vast difference between one book and another on the same subject written in different epochs . . . that he who would seek sound knowledge and is suddenly placed in a vast historical library finds himself thrown into a veritable labyrinth.”
Napoleon wrote in 1807
”With over fifteen hundred people having recorded their memories of Napoleon in some form or another, that labyrinth is not always easy to navigate...Napoleon’s legacy is one of the most fiercely debated in all of modern historiography.”
“What is history? An echo of the past in the future; a reflex from the future on the past.”
“Qu'est-ce que l’histoire ? Un écho du passé dans le futur ; un réflexe du futur sur le passé.”
“All these things, realities full of ghosts, phantasmagoria full of realities, had ended up creating a kind of almost inexpressible inner state for him.”