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History Quotes


"I'm William Wallace, and the rest of you will be spared. Go back to England and tell them... Scotland is free!"


"I loved history because to me, history was like watching a movie."


"OUR history begins before we are born. We represent the hereditary influences of our race, and our ancestors virtually live in us."


"Permanent superiority has never been realized by any nation in history. After the rise comes the fall."


"And thus goes segregation which is the most far-reaching development in the history of the Negro since the enslavement of the race."


"Those who have heard me speak from time to time know that quite often I cite the observation of that great American author, Mark Twain, who said, history does not repeat itself, but it rhymes."



"The American Revolution was, in fact, a battle against the philosophy of Locke and the English utilitarians."


"When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority are wrong."


"History can predict nothing except that great changes in human relationships will never come about in the form in which they have been anticipated."


"In my opinion, assassination theories will continue to revolve around these assassinations as they have around several other significant assassinations in American history. The assassination of President Lincoln comes to mind."



"History is the essence of innumerable biographies."


"The sanctity of our battlefields, monuments, and veterans institutions is of utmost importance to preserve military history and pay respect to those who fought."


"Man seems to insist on ignoring the lessons available from history."


"Gender consciousness has become involved in almost every intellectual field: history, literature, science, anthropology. There's been an extraordinary advance."


"After Nixon resigned in 1974, he engaged in a very aggressive war with history, attempting to wipe out the Watergate stain and memory. Happily, history won, largely because of Nixon's tapes."



"Our history is that we can very aggressively, if necessary, and openly and democratically discuss our differences. We have a democratic history in which we come together and vote on these things."


"For some reason, I grew up generally believing that Japan and Korea were quite friendly. I do know that there is some bad history and the extremists on both sides are unreasonable."



"It is ironic that the United States should have been founded by intellectuals, for throughout most of our political history, the intellectual has been for the most part either an outsider, a servant or a scapegoat."



"So I'm OK with myself, with history, my work, who I am and who I was."



"History is one of those marvelous and necessary illusions we have to deal with. It's one of the ways of dealing with our world with impossible generalities which we couldn't live without."


"The Rockwell magazine cover was more a part of the American reality than a record of it."



"This war is not necessary. We are truly sleepwalking through history."


"Man is not logical and his intellectual history is a record of mental reserves and compromises. He hangs on to what he can in his old beliefs even when he is compelled to surrender their logical basis."


"One would have to have completely forgotten the history of science so as to not remember that the desire to know nature has had the most constant and the happiest influence on the development of mathematics."


"There have been only rare moments in history where individual histories were able to run their course without wars or revolutions."


"The coast of British Columbia was one of the three chief centers of aboriginal America."


"I see the great continuities in New Zealand history as being decency and common sense and up until now when we've confronted these things we've been able to talk them through, and I'm sure we will with this issue as well."


"I think that every so-called history book and film biography should be prefaced by the statement that what follows is the author's rendition of events and circumstances."


"The problem with allowing God a role in the history of life is not that science would cease, but rather that scientists would have to acknowledge the existence of something important which is outside the boundaries of natural science."



"What a year to live in! Worth all other times ever known in our history or any other."


"I wanted to make sure that this be the first scientific and technology revolution in history in which the public thoroughly discussed all the potential benefits and all the potential harms, in advance of the technology coming online and running its course."



"States are far less violent than traditional bands and tribes. Modern Western countries, even in their most war-torn centuries, suffered no more than around a quarter of the average death rate of nonstate societies, and less than a tenth of that for the most violent one."


"Never in the history of cinema has a medium entertained an audience. It's what you do with the medium."


"Equally, we require a collective past - hence the endless reinterpretations of history, frequently to suit the perceptions of the present."



"Anything in history or nature that can be described as changing steadily can be seen as heading toward catastrophe."
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