My wife and I recently watched the 2025 film, "Nuremburg", starring Rami Malek, Russell Crowe, and Michael Shannon (among other notable stars). The film is advertised as a psychological thriller and historical drama that tells the story of U.S. Army psychiatrist Douglas Kelley (played by Rami Malek) who was assigned to investigate the personalities and monitor the mental status of Hermann Göring (played by Russell Crowe) and other high-ranking Nazis in preparation for and during the Nuremberg trials, following the end of World War II. The film is based on the 2013 book, The Nazi and the Psychiatrist by Jack El-Hai. Both the film and the book are superb, and I highly recommend them.
The film ends with what I thought was an poignant and powerful quote by the English historian and philosopher, R. G. Collingwood, "The only clue to what man can do is what man has done." The quote comes from Collingwood's posthumously published book, The Idea of History and makes the point that humans are capable of many things, both good and bad (in this particular story's case, very bad), and if you need to be convinced that this is so, all you have to do is look at history.
I really liked the quote, so after hearing it, I did what I frequently do - I wrote it down and looked it up. As it turns out, the film's production team took the quote slightly out of context. Here is the entire quote from Collingwood's book:
"Knowing yourself means knowing first, what it is to be a person; secondly, knowing what it is to be the kind of person you are; and thirdly, knowing what it is to be the person you are and nobody else is. Knowing yourself means knowing what you can do; and since nobody knows what they can do until they try, the only clue to what man can do is what man has done. The value of history, then, is that it teaches us what man has done and thus what man is."
Did you notice anything different? The original quote, with the proper context, sounds much more positive. Even though the shortened quote fit perfectly with the theme of "Nuremburg", I'm not the meaning I took from the quote at the end of the movie fit with Collingwood's original meaning and intent. And that is one of the main problems I have with using shortened quotes without providing any context. Context matters. Original meaning matters. We should be more careful when we use shortened quotes from other sources.
Overall, my message today should not detract from how powerful the movie was in conveying what happened during a very difficult period of history. It's a great movie that I would highly recommend.
