“From the very beginning, history wasn't content simply to be nostalgic...” — Simon Schama Quote

“From the very beginning, history wasn't content simply to be nostalgic fairytales; it wanted to make you think.”

“The Elephantine papyri - written as some of the books of the Bible are being written - is true social and legal documentation, and to historians overwhelmingly powerful and moving, even when ostensibly about trivial things.”

“Growing up in Britain as a rather loose Jew, the two things that didn't belong together were freedom and religious intensity. In America, they do. The Founding Fathers made a bet that if you didn't force everyone to profess religion in their own particular way, you could protect intellectual freedom, and religion would flourish.”

“What I most want you to understand is that your body is continuously and convincingly sending messages to your brain, and you get to control the content of those messages.”

“If children are given some real content, they can feel powerful with their own understanding of it. I think a movie like 'Indian in the Cupboard' will instruct them how to proceed as people. They can think about whether they would have done something the way a character did, how they would have felt about an event in the story.”