Contrary to the conventional wisdom, the historical fact is that the rich countries did not develop on the basis of the policies and the institutions that they now recommend to, and often force upon, the developing countries. Unfortunately, this fact is little known these days because the 'official historians' of capitalism have been very successful in re-writing its history.

The enormous and half-educated publics of present-day England and America… acclaim as masterpieces books that are soon forgotten, while ignoring all that is exquisite and rare.

The rich world likes and wishes to believe that someone, somewhere, is doing something for the Third World. For this reason, it does not inquire too closely into the motives or practices of anyone who fulfills, however vicariously, this mandate.

Generally speaking, all the great events have been distorted, most of the important causes concealed, some of the principal characters never appear, and all who figure are so misunderstood and misrepresented, that the result is a complete mystification, and the perusal of the narrative about as profitable as reading the Republic of Plato or the Utopia if More.

[T]he very people who write so disparagingly about it either do not understand it, or I suspect even more, understand it all too well and do not like the implications of it.

These men seem not to know that poetry has its particular rules and precepts; and that history is governed by others directly opposite.

...History is written by the rich, and so the poor get blamed for everything."

The books that influence the world are those that it has not read.

I think the misunderstanding (about Africa) comes from the fact that the world is split between powers. Right now Africa is really not in power when it comes to global politics. We still have the voices of the former colonialists speaking for many African countries... We still don't have Africans telling the stories of what is happening. The people telling the stories are non-Africans who have not really grasped the historical context of Africa.

حقاً إن بعض النّاس يقرأون التاريخ ولا يفهمون منه شيئا ...

Many analysts have fallen for the right-wing construction of a new world. Suddenly they think they must have missed something fundamental, some tectonic shift that was rumbling, undetected, beneath their feet.

Any story that needs a critic to explain it, needs rewriting. A lucidly written, easily understood book is likely to escape critical attention.

The lack of a sense of history is the damnation of the modern world.

I don't buy this version that they are so brainwashed that they don't understand what is happening. We don't live in the Soviet era when there was no internet or when citizens couldn't travel abroad or didn't have any means of getting information.