Presentism Quotes

“It’s hard for me to believe that I will die. Because I’m bubbling in a frigid freshness. My life is going to be very long because each instant is. The impression is that I’m still to be born and I can’t quite manage it.”
― Clarice Lispector

“The study of history is an antidote to the hubris of the present – the idea that everything we have, everything we do and everything we think is the ultimate, the best.”
― David McCullough

“The historian, like everyone else, is forever trapped in the egocentric predicament, and 'presentism' is his original sin.”
― Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., The Cycles Of American History: Updated Edition―A Political Historian's Reflection on Two Centuries of Pragmatism vs Idealism

“Yanked out of the present, Adam discovered the richness of the past in people's stories.”
― Randy Alcorn, Courageous

“Rather than pound or a national mind that he believed had been closed by his critics, John Quincy Adams decided to seek a place in the is the esteem of future generations.”
― Paul C. Nagel, John Quincy Adams: A Public Life, a Private Life

“Feeling its power, one Civil War paper trumpeted that Milton and Homer were for another age but for this one was the New York Herald.”
― Harold Holzer, Lincoln and the Power of the Press: The War for Public Opinion

“It’s not easy to forgive—especially in a society obsessed with presentism and castigating past mistakes. The slightest error gets you canceled, forgotten, and erased from history. It feels like there’s no context anymore, just judgment.”
― Rafael Moscatel, The Secret Adoption: A Family Memoir

“I think the whole culture of that time was at fault for oppressing people and presenting them with bad options.”
“That sounds a lot easier to say today than it was to do yesterday,” says William, not caring that anyone else is here. “You sit there and judge him from your twenty-first-century pedestal and do not even try to see things from his point of view, yet you fault him for not considering Jane’s.”
“There is a term,” says Minaro, “that explains our tendency to interpret past events through modern values. It is called presentism.”
No one even pretends to care.”
― Romina Garber, The Last Vampire