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Top 30 Simon Schama Quotes (2025 Update)

Simon Schama Quote: “Great art has dreadful manners. The greatest paintings grab you in a headlock, rough up your composure, and then proceed in short order to re-arrange your reality.”

1. “Great art has dreadful manners. The greatest paintings grab you in a headlock, rough up your composure, and then proceed in short order to re-arrange your reality.”

— Simon Schama

Simon Schama Quote: “I don’t really like the autumn. For me it is the beginning of winter and I hate the winter. White, the colour of death.”

2. “I don’t really like the autumn. For me it is the beginning of winter and I hate the winter. White, the colour of death.”

— Simon Schama

Simon Schama Quote: “Irreverence is the lifeblood of freedom.”

3. “Irreverence is the lifeblood of freedom.”

— Simon Schama

Simon Schama Quote: “The older I get, the more I want to do. It beats death, decay or golf in unfortunate trousers. Peace and quiet depress me.”

4. “The older I get, the more I want to do. It beats death, decay or golf in unfortunate trousers. Peace and quiet depress me.”

— Simon Schama

Simon Schama Quote: “Histories never conclude; they just pause their prose. Their stories are, if they are truthful, untidy affairs, resistant to windings-up and sortings-out. They beat raggedly on into the future...”

5. “Histories never conclude; they just pause their prose. Their stories are, if they are truthful, untidy affairs, resistant to windings-up and sortings-out. They beat raggedly on into the future...”

— Simon Schama

Simon Schama Quote: “But it struck me that the extreme violence and cruelty of the English Civil War had gone understated.”

6. “But it struck me that the extreme violence and cruelty of the English Civil War had gone understated.”

— Simon Schama

Simon Schama Quote: “Historians are left forever chasing shadows, painfully aware of their inability ever to reconstruct a dead world in its completeness however thorough or revealing their documentation. We are doomed to be forever hailing someone who has just gone around the corner and out of earshot.”

7. “Historians are left forever chasing shadows, painfully aware of their inability ever to reconstruct a dead world in its completeness however thorough or revealing their documentation. We are doomed to be forever hailing someone who has just gone around the corner and out of earshot.”

— Simon Schama

Simon Schama Quote: “In its Greek origins, historia meant inquiry, and from Thucydides onwards, the past has been studied to understand its connections with the present.”

8. “In its Greek origins, historia meant inquiry, and from Thucydides onwards, the past has been studied to understand its connections with the present.”

— Simon Schama

Simon Schama Quote: “Asked what he thought was the significance of the French Revolution, the Chinese Premier Zhou En-lai is reported to have answered, “It’s too soon to tell.”

9. “Asked what he thought was the significance of the French Revolution, the Chinese Premier Zhou En-lai is reported to have answered, “It’s too soon to tell.”

— Simon Schama

Simon Schama Quote: “DIY, cricket, automobile repair. I could study it for a lifetime and not produce a word on the carburettor.”

10. “DIY, cricket, automobile repair. I could study it for a lifetime and not produce a word on the carburettor.”

— Simon Schama

Simon Schama Quote: “Nations don’t start out. There is not a particular moment when they unveil the essence of themselves. They are always a work in progress.”

11. “Nations don’t start out. There is not a particular moment when they unveil the essence of themselves. They are always a work in progress.”

— Simon Schama

Simon Schama Quote: “At 11, 12, I thought I was clumsy, ugly, a mess, an unappealing person, but I did have the gift of the gab. I had the school record at Haberdashers for consecutive detentions for simply speaking out of turn.”

12. “At 11, 12, I thought I was clumsy, ugly, a mess, an unappealing person, but I did have the gift of the gab. I had the school record at Haberdashers for consecutive detentions for simply speaking out of turn.”

— Simon Schama

Simon Schama Quote: “What can art really do in the face of atrocity?”

13. “What can art really do in the face of atrocity?”

— Simon Schama

Simon Schama Quote: “There are some places where history just grabs you by the jugular. This is one of them.”

14. “There are some places where history just grabs you by the jugular. This is one of them.”

— Simon Schama

Simon Schama Quote: “The irony about Charles II is not that he came to the throne because England needed a successor to Charles I, but because England needed a successor to Oliver Cromwell.”

15. “The irony about Charles II is not that he came to the throne because England needed a successor to Charles I, but because England needed a successor to Oliver Cromwell.”

— Simon Schama

Simon Schama Quote: “In the end, history, especially British history with its succession of thrilling illuminations, should be, as all her most accomplished narrators have promised, not just instruction but pleasure.”

16. “In the end, history, especially British history with its succession of thrilling illuminations, should be, as all her most accomplished narrators have promised, not just instruction but pleasure.”

— Simon Schama

Simon Schama Quote: “Charles was constitutionally incapable of being a constitutional monarch.”

17. “Charles was constitutionally incapable of being a constitutional monarch.”

— Simon Schama

Simon Schama Quote: “Walking on camera is damn hard. It’s a Jewish problem. The rangy stride across the blasted moor is not really a Jewish thing.”

18. “Walking on camera is damn hard. It’s a Jewish problem. The rangy stride across the blasted moor is not really a Jewish thing.”

— Simon Schama

Simon Schama Quote: “Charlie Hebdo: Satire was the father of true political freedom, born in the 18th century; the scourge of bigots and tyrants. Sing its praises.”

19. “Charlie Hebdo: Satire was the father of true political freedom, born in the 18th century; the scourge of bigots and tyrants. Sing its praises.”

— Simon Schama

Simon Schama Quote: “The way history is currently taught in schools, jumping from Hitler to the Henrys, is like a nightmare vision of Star Wars, where you have episode four before you have episode one. The sense of going on a journey of chronology and continuity, is incredibly important to the imagination.”

20. “The way history is currently taught in schools, jumping from Hitler to the Henrys, is like a nightmare vision of Star Wars, where you have episode four before you have episode one. The sense of going on a journey of chronology and continuity, is incredibly important to the imagination.”

— Simon Schama

Simon Schama Quote: “From 1789, perhaps even before that, it had been the willingness of politicians to exploit either the threat or the fact of violence that had given them the power to challenge constituted authority. Bloodshed was not the unfortunate by product of revolution, it was the source of energy.”

21. “From 1789, perhaps even before that, it had been the willingness of politicians to exploit either the threat or the fact of violence that had given them the power to challenge constituted authority. Bloodshed was not the unfortunate by product of revolution, it was the source of energy.”

— Simon Schama

Simon Schama Quote: “The next worse thing to a battle lost is a battle won.”

22. “The next worse thing to a battle lost is a battle won.”

— Simon Schama

Simon Schama Quote: “I first read War And Peace about 100 years after Tolstoy wrote it.”

23. “I first read War And Peace about 100 years after Tolstoy wrote it.”

— Simon Schama

Simon Schama Quote: “We seem wired to grieve with greenery. Allowing the dead to dissolve into the earth, to become part of the cycle of the seasons, has, for millennia, held the promise of cheating mortality.”

24. “We seem wired to grieve with greenery. Allowing the dead to dissolve into the earth, to become part of the cycle of the seasons, has, for millennia, held the promise of cheating mortality.”

— Simon Schama

Simon Schama Quote: “The Torah, then, was compact, transferable history, law, wisdom, poetic chant, prophecy, consolation and self-strengthening counsel. Just as the sanctuary could be erected in safety and dismantled in crisis, the speaking scroll was designed to survive even incineration, because the scribes who had composed and edited it had memorised its oral traditions and its texts as part of their basic education.”

25. “The Torah, then, was compact, transferable history, law, wisdom, poetic chant, prophecy, consolation and self-strengthening counsel. Just as the sanctuary could be erected in safety and dismantled in crisis, the speaking scroll was designed to survive even incineration, because the scribes who had composed and edited it had memorised its oral traditions and its texts as part of their basic education.”

— Simon Schama

Simon Schama Quote: “I felt New York was a big, more stylish, more metropolitan Golders Green. I was thrilled.”

26. “I felt New York was a big, more stylish, more metropolitan Golders Green. I was thrilled.”

— Simon Schama

Simon Schama Quote: “I actually think that history has fed off the restlessness of cyber space, of kind of the frantic, segmented nature of the way we lead our lives. People want to be connected.”

27. “I actually think that history has fed off the restlessness of cyber space, of kind of the frantic, segmented nature of the way we lead our lives. People want to be connected.”

— Simon Schama

Simon Schama Quote: “It is already apparent that the ‘minimalist’ view of the Bible as wholly fictitious and unhooked from historical reality, may be as much of a mistake as the biblical literalism it sought to supersede.”

28. “It is already apparent that the ‘minimalist’ view of the Bible as wholly fictitious and unhooked from historical reality, may be as much of a mistake as the biblical literalism it sought to supersede.”

— Simon Schama

Simon Schama Quote: “Even for the most excitable preacher, there was nothing inherently sinful about a waffle.”

29. “Even for the most excitable preacher, there was nothing inherently sinful about a waffle.”

— Simon Schama

Simon Schama Quote: “The first century of the plague had seen the country turned upside down. In the twilight years of Edward III it seemed that nothing could damage the greatness of the Plantagenet royal estate. But the world of the village went from impoverished claustrophobia to traumatized infection. A hundred years later, everything had been upended, courtesy of King Death.”

30. “The first century of the plague had seen the country turned upside down. In the twilight years of Edward III it seemed that nothing could damage the greatness of the Plantagenet royal estate. But the world of the village went from impoverished claustrophobia to traumatized infection. A hundred years later, everything had been upended, courtesy of King Death.”

— Simon Schama

Simon Schama Quote: “Almost everywhere else in Europe, the more military the state, the stronger the king – except in Britain. Here it was parliament, not the monarchy, who signed the cheques. The longer the war went on, the stronger parliament became, as the purse on which it sat grew bigger and bigger.”

31. “Almost everywhere else in Europe, the more military the state, the stronger the king – except in Britain. Here it was parliament, not the monarchy, who signed the cheques. The longer the war went on, the stronger parliament became, as the purse on which it sat grew bigger and bigger.”

— Simon Schama

Simon Schama Quote: “In America, much foreign policy seems contrived to be an exercise in political theory with no attention to history whatsoever. Yet there’s a great reverence for history – though it’s history as thumb-sucking, security blanket-nibbling self-congratulation.”

32. “In America, much foreign policy seems contrived to be an exercise in political theory with no attention to history whatsoever. Yet there’s a great reverence for history – though it’s history as thumb-sucking, security blanket-nibbling self-congratulation.”

— Simon Schama

Simon Schama Quote: “The wearing of skullcaps in public was criminalised, as were other items defined as habitually Jewish. But Hasidic Jews responded by adopting the costume of the Polish-Russian merchant; the black fox-fur shtreimel hat worn over the yarmulka, the long belted black coat and white stockings that merchants wore in St Petersburg. This is what they still wear in Jerusalem and elsewhere, imagined as distinctively Jewish dress, which frozen over the generations it has duly become.”

33. “The wearing of skullcaps in public was criminalised, as were other items defined as habitually Jewish. But Hasidic Jews responded by adopting the costume of the Polish-Russian merchant; the black fox-fur shtreimel hat worn over the yarmulka, the long belted black coat and white stockings that merchants wore in St Petersburg. This is what they still wear in Jerusalem and elsewhere, imagined as distinctively Jewish dress, which frozen over the generations it has duly become.”

— Simon Schama

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