Michel-Rolph Trouillot famous quotes

The silencing of the Haitian Revolution is only a chapter within a narrative of global domination. It is part of the history of the West and it is likely to persist, even in attenuated form, as long as the history of the West is not retold in ways that bring forward the perspective of the world.
-- Michel-Rolph Trouillot

#Perspective #Long #World

Any historical narrative is a bundle of silences.
-- Michel-Rolph Trouillot

#History #Silence #Historical

History is the fruit of power, but power itself is never so transparent that its analysis becomes superfluous. The ultimate mark of power may be its invisibility; the ultimate challenge, the exposition of its roots.
-- Michel-Rolph Trouillot

#Roots #Challenges #May

Silences enter the process of historical production at four crucial moments: the moment of fact creation (the making of sources); the moment of fact assembly (the making of archives); the moment of fact retrieval (the making of narratives); and the moment of retrospective significance (the making of history in the final instance).
-- Michel-Rolph Trouillot

#Silence #Historical #Archives

But the past does not exist independently from the present. Indeed, the past is only past because there is a present, just as I can point to something over there only because I am here. But nothing is inherently over there or here. In that sense, the past has no content. The past - or more accurately, pastness - is a position. Thus, in no way can we identify the past as past
-- Michel-Rolph Trouillot

#Past #Way #Doe

But we may want to keep in mind that deeds and words are not as distinguishable as often we presume. History does not belong only to its narrators, professional or amateur. While some of us debate what history is or was, others take it into their own hands.
-- Michel-Rolph Trouillot

#Hands #Deeds And Words #Mind

What is necessary to change a person is to change his awareness of himself.

A change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points. Perspective is worth 80 IQ points. Point of view is worth 80 IQ points

One reason I can be more tolerant than most is that as a therapist I have the advantage of information about my patients that most people are not privy to. And I discover that we rarely if ever see the totality of another in ordinary social intercourse. When an individual appears mean and lazy, we are only seeing one part of the person, elicited by a particular set of circumstances on a particular day, and we do well to wait a while before concluding that what we see is the whole person.

You can measure a programmer's perspective by noting his attitude on the continuing vitality of FORTRAN.

Oh, Eeyore, you are wet!” said Piglet, feeling him. Eeyore shook himself, and asked somebody to explain to Piglet what happened when you had been inside a river for quite a long time.

As long as you want anything very much, especially more than you want God, it is an idol.

The greatest problem about old age is the fear that it may go on too long.

God help us if we ever take the theater out of the auction business or anything else. It would be an awfully boring world.

A divided heart loses both worlds.

It is impossible for me to estimate how many of my early impressions of the world, correct and the opposite, came to me through newspapers. Homicide, adultery, no-hit pitching, and Balkanism were concepts that, left to my own devices, I would have encountered much later in life.