Heroes for a Better World

Gerda Lerner
(1920-)

American Historian

birthdate: April 30
birthplace:
Vienna, Austria

QUOTES

When I started working on women's history about thirty years ago, the field did not exist.

Women's history is the primary tool for women's emancipation.

Everything that explains the world has in fact explained a world that does not exist, a world in which men are at the center of the human enterprise and women are at the margin "helping" them. Such a world does not exist -- never has.

We can learn from history how past generations thought and acted, how they responded to the demands of their time and how they solved their problems. We can learn by analogy, not by example, for our circumstances will always be different than theirs were. The main thing history can teach us is that human actions have consequences and that certain choices, once made, cannot be undone. They foreclose the possibility of making other choices and thus they determine future events.

Historical events are infinitely variable and their interpretations are a constantly shifting process. There are no certainties to be found in the past.

Long-term commitment to an intimate relationship with one person of whatever sex is an essential need that people have in order to breed the qualities out of which nurturant thought can rise.

When you get older, you have a desire to look at your whole life, not just the end result and not just a particular point.

Our ideas about what is possible for the future are formed out of our knowledge of what was possible in the past.

I think that we are for the first time now at a point where both men and women are beginning to see that the world was not just made by men, that civilization was not just made by men, and that women are as capable as men of giving leadership, innovating social ideas and solutions.

 


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