Tony Judt Quote

History is not written as it was experienced, nor should it be. The inhabitants of the past know better than we do what it was like to live there, but they were not well placed, most of them, to understand what was happening to them and why.

Introduction: The Misjudgment of Paris - The Burden of Responsibility: Blum, Camus, Aron, and the French Twentieth Century (1998)