Fake History Quotes

“Human beings can do astonishing things when we rid ourselves of the menace of illusory superiority and embrace knowledge instead.”
― Otto English, Fake History: Ten Great Lies and How They Shaped the World

“Who after all would be stupid enough to believe in Merlin and his magical erection at Stonehenge?”
― Otto English, Fake History: Ten Great Lies and How They Shaped the World

“Churchill was a product of an Empire that believed itself culturally and morally superior to everyone else on Earth.”
― Otto English, Fake History: Ten Great Lies and How They Shaped the World

“Why challenge the bedrock of our collective national consciousness when it comforts us to indulge in fairy tales instead?”
― Otto English, Fake History: Ten Great Lies and How They Shaped the World

“Nobody chooses the place of their birth. Nationality is happenstance. But condition millions of people into believing that their tribe is better than everyone else’s and you create a vicious and dangerous climate of extremism.”
― Otto English, Fake History: Ten Great Lies and How They Shaped the World

“The legends of “great men” can be forged out of greed, stupidity and barbarity. Shored up by liars and dissemblers, the myths can perpetuate and prosper, but not to the advantage of the vast majority of ordinary people – the pawns of history.”
― Otto English, Fake History: Ten Great Lies and How They Shaped the World

“The characters might change but human nature and human folly do not.”
― Otto English, Fake History: Ten Great Lies and How They Shaped the World

“The most important tool in the armoury of any archaeologist is a bullshit detector. The mental capacity to question evidence and to ask: “Is this what it seems to be? Does this support what I believe to be true, or do I simply want it to fit into my argument?”
― Otto English, Fake History: Ten Great Lies and How They Shaped the World

“history has been footballified – if I can use such a term. It’s been turned into a game, with sides and jeering supporters.”
― Otto English, Fake History: Ten Great Lies and How They Shaped the World

“Churchill was not a defender of democracy – he was a defender of the British Empire. And the two are not analogous.”
― Otto English, Fake History: Ten Great Lies and How They Shaped the World

“In short, the “dominant narrative” of history has, for the last thousand years at least, been dictated by “the dominant people” and that means that it has been written by white males, about white males, for white males.”
― Otto English, Fake History: Ten Great Lies and How They Shaped the World

“Statues are not harmless artifacts. They deliberately contrive to shore up narratives that attribute all of history and its deeds to a carefully selected group of mostly male individuals.”
― Otto English, Fake History: Ten Great Lies and How They Shaped the World

“the best days are never, for the most part, behind us – and that, on the contrary, they are usually yet to come.”
― Otto English, Fake History: Ten Great Lies and How They Shaped the World

“As the truth of events belatedly becomes part of mainstream history, it’s essential that it is held to the same high standards of academic rigour and discipline as everything else.”
― Otto English, Fake History: Ten Great Lies and How They Shaped the World

“There can be no “free passes” in history.”
― Otto English, Fake History: Ten Great Lies and How They Shaped the World

“Most of us don’t question the history lessons of childhood. We go through life for the most part believing what we were told.”
― Otto English, Fake History: Ten Great Lies and How They Shaped the World

“If only more people could follow the example. Seeking conciliation can be a thankless and time-consuming task. It requires time and goodwill. But more than that – a willingness on the part of leaders and players to set old enmities aside for the greater good of the people and show some humility. But why waste your brief term in office on that, when you can throw dead cats around instead.”
― Otto English, Fake History: Ten Great Lies and How They Shaped the World

“They want to believe in Churchill the great hero and that pizza comes from Italy and vindaloo from India, when in fact pizza originates in the Middle East and vindaloo is a twisted take on the Portuguese dish carne de vinha d’alhos (meaning “meat in a garlic marinade”).”
― Otto English, Fake History: Ten Great Lies and How They Shaped the World

“History and culture are more than the faint traces of genetic markers from the past.”
― Otto English, Fake History: Ten Great Lies and How They Shaped the World

“This same tendency to deliberately disremember chunks of family history is the reason you never meet an aristocrat who crows that the family pile was built on the profits of slavery.”
― Otto English, Fake History: Ten Great Lies and How They Shaped the World

“Those who still seek to defend the actions of British Imperialists argue that ‘‘the Empire was a good thing”
― Otto English, Fake History: Ten Great Lies and How They Shaped the World

“Several years ago, I wrote an article for The Independent newspaper questioning how long we should continue with remembrance now everyone who had been involved was dead. Subsequently, I was invited onto BBC Three Counties Radio to discuss the piece and soon an elderly chap from Bedfordshire was ringing in to suggest that I be put against a wall and shot. I wasn’t proposing dismantling of the Cenotaph. I was simply suggesting that it was getting unhealthy, and worse, that contemporary politicians were appropriating those events and the lives of those lost men and boys for modern political aims. I was suggesting that we were at risk of turning the war dead into victims and saints. I suggested that what was needed was more balance and context and truth, that it was unhealthy to keep looking back and to constantly be in thrall to the mythos of war. But it was too much for him – or any of the later callers. The awkward truth is that remembrance in Britain no longer has much to do with the wars. It has become a nationalistic tribal indulgence. The poppy has become a badge of fealty to faith in the cult. Its absence from the lapels of television presenters is called out and condemned. Fail to wear one and you’re accused of “hating this country”. No symbol has been more sentimentalised or weaponised or so tragically dragged through the mud.”
― Otto English, Fake History: Ten Great Lies and How They Shaped the World

“The Second World War ended in 1945, but many in Britain have never come to terms with the win. Britain has a seemingly incurable case of war delusion and for much of the month of October and early November the cult indulges in “war Christmas” – an orgy of flag waving, poppy-wearing and misty-eyed remembrance for a conflict that 98% of us cannot remember. Challenge the sacred texts of either that or the Great War of 1914–18 that my both my grandfathers had fought in, or worse, suggest that we should move on from all of this indulgence, and you risk inviting significant ire.”
― Otto English, Fake History: Ten Great Lies and How They Shaped the World

“Columbus was not really an explorer. He wasn’t even trying to do something useful, such as prove that the Earth was round. Why would he, when everyone knew this already? His motivation was wealth.”
― Otto English, Fake History: Ten Great Lies and How They Shaped the World

“Detail has been traduced and the truth jeopardised, with events remoulded by populists to fit neat little narratives and to secure power for their own ends.”
― Otto English, Fake History: Ten Great Lies and How They Shaped the World

“And you cannot bring logic or reason to bear on religious icons.”
― Otto English, Fake History: Ten Great Lies and How They Shaped the World

“Churchill was obsessed with popular opinion and what we nowadays call “optics”. Image was everything and on his long path of self-promotion, no publicity stunt was to be missed. He often got it wrong.”
― Otto English, Fake History: Ten Great Lies and How They Shaped the World