History isn't the lies of the victors, as I once glibly assured Old Joe Hunt; I know that now. It's more the memories of the survivors, most of whom are neither victorious or defeated.

About This Quote

The quote above by John Steinbeck is very controversial. It speaks about how history isn't the lies of the victors, as I once glibly assured Old Joe Hunt; I know that now. It's more the memories of the survivors, most of whom are neither victorious or defeated. The idea of the victors and the vanquished is very biased.

The victors write their history while the vanquished are written out of history. It is also unfair to write history based on the memories of people who are not alive today. The point Steinbeck was making is that it’s not what happened that matters, but what people experience in their lives that matters.

History should only be written by those that lived through it to give us a true account of what happened.

Source: The Sense Of An Ending

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