"There is a tendency now in revisionist history
to explain the past in terms of movements and trends of the contemporary time.
This is inevitably reductionist.
The suffering of the people is forgotten;
they become faceless, mere ciphers of a trend or dynamic of history.
To sanitize history is to blaspheme against memory.
Equally, to become obsessed with the past is to paralyze the future."
-John O'Donohue
