top of page

"I'm interested in the way in which the past affects the present and I think that if we understand a good deal more about history, we automatically understand a great more about contemporary life."
Standard
Customized
Exlpore more History quotes

"Take up the white man's burden - Send forth the best ye breed - Go bind your sons to exile To serve your captives' need."

"History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of "history it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time-and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened."

"History is a pack of lies about events that never happened told by people who weren't there."

"Dr. Rex Curry, the professor and attorney from Florida, has debated and largely proven the unavoidable evidence that Hitler's National Socialism was significantly influenced by Bellamy's 'nationalistic' form of 'socialism.' Curry is famous for making the claim that Hitler adopted the 'stiff-arm salute' from Francis and Edward Bellamy."

"But it is a law of life and development in history where two national civilizations meet they fight for ascendancy."

"The only hope is that our civilization will collapse at a certain point, as always happens in history. Then, out of barbarity, a renaissance."

"Three million years! The infinitely crowded panorama of written history, with its empires and its kings, its triumphs and its tragedies, covered barely one thousandth of this appalling span of time."

"Properly speaking, history is nothing but the crimes and misfortunes of the human race."
Explore more quotes by Toni Morrison


"Writing is really a way of thinking--not just feeling but thinking about things that are disparate, unresolved, mysterious, problematic or just sweet."


"What I think the political correctness debate is really about is the power to be able to define. The definers want the power to name. And the defined are now taking that power away from them."


"They hooted and laughed all the way back to the car, teasing Milkman, egging him on to tell more about how scared he was. And he told them. Laughing too, hard, loud, and long. Really laughing, and he found himself exhilarated by simply walking the earth. Walking it like he belonged on it; like his legs were stalks, tree trunks, a part of his body that extended down down down into the rock and soil, and were comfortable there--on the earth and on the place where he walked. And he did not limp."


"Sethe, he says, "me and you, we got more yesterday than anybody. We need some kind of tomorrow."He leans over and takes her hand. With the other he touches her face. "You your best thing, Sethe, You are." His holding fingers are holding hers. "Me? Me?"


"You marvel at the economy and this choice of words. How many ways can you describe the sky and the moon? After Sylvia Plath, what can you say?"
bottom of page