top of page
.png){kind=small}
Exlpore more History quotes
"In the legal respect, after the execution of the supposed incendiaries, the other half of Moscow burned down."
"In the parlor was a huge camera on wheels like the ones used in public parks, and the backdrop of a marine twilight, painted with homemade paints, and the walls papered with pictures of children at memorable moments: the first Communion, the bunny costume, the happy birthday. Year after year, during contemplative pauses on afternoons of chess, Dr. Urbino had seen the gradual covering over of the walls, and he had often thought with a shudder of sorrow that in the gallery of casual portraits lay the germ of the future of the city, governed and corrupted by those unknown children, where note even the ashes of his glory would remain."
"That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons of history."
"History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies."
"The opportunity of studying history, is the opportunity to experience empathy."
"Nobody can understand the greatness of the thirteenth century, who does not realize that it was a great growth of new things produced by a living thing. In that sense it was really bolder and freer than what we call the renaissance, which was a resurrection of old things discovered in a dead thing... and the Gospel according to St. Thomas... was a new thrust like the titanic thrust of Gothic engineering; and its strength was in a God that makes all things new."
"Every past is worth condemning."
"Nothing is long ago in an archive, my dear. In the records we treat the dead as same as the living. that's the whole point of keeping papers. It doesn't matter if it's a hundred years or only a few weeks. It's all filed away, fresh as the day it went under the covers."
"Upon examination of a people's history, beware the story teller's motives."
Explore more quotes by Arthur Erickson
"With production alone as the goal, industry in North America was dominated by the assembly line, standardization for mass consumption."
"No phenomenon can be isolated, but has repercussions through every aspect of our lives. We are learning that we are a fundamental part of nature's ecosystems."
"The innovative spirit was America's strongest attribute, transforming everything into a brave new world, but there lingered an insecurity about the arts."
"We find Japan a little more difficult to understand because it has proven its 20th century prowess though the ancient traditions still persist."
"Our engineering departments build freeways which destroy a city or a landscape, in the process."
"The Achilles Heel of the Americas was the lack of cultural confidence typical of new settlers."
"The obsession with performance left no room for the development of the intuitive or spiritual impact of space and form other than the aesthetic of the machine itself."
"God's designs may be frequent justification for our actions, but it is we, the self-made men, who take the credit."
bottom of page