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History Quotes
"History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. History is who we are and why we are the way we are."
56
"It's a journalist's job to be a witness to history. We're not there to worry about ourselves. We're there to try and get as near as we can, in an imperfect world, to the truth and get the truth out."
55
"The Holocaust was an obscene period in our nation's history. I mean in this century's history. But we all lived in this century. I didn't live in this century."
48
"The history of Christianity, therefore, must be of concern to all who are interested in the record of man and particularly to all who seek to understand the contemporary human scene."
45
"Most of my career has been spent with the RSC doing Shakespeare, and the thing you learn from Shakespeare is that his historical plays don't bear anything other than a basic resemblance to history."
44
"During the Vietnam War, every respectable artist in this country was against the war. It was like a laser beam. We were all aimed in the same direction. The power of this weapon turns out to be that of a custard pie dropped from a stepladder six feet high."
44
"To investigate the history of man's development, the most important finds are, of course, hominid fossils."
43
"Christianity is usually called a religion. As a religion it has had a wider geographic spread and is more deeply rooted among more peoples than any other religion in the history of mankind."
42
"Oh, do not read history, for that I know must be false."
41
"History is little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind."
39
"People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them."
39
"Once California belonged to Mexico and its land to Mexicans; and a horde of tattered feverish Americans poured in. And such was their hunger for land that they took the land, stole Sutter's land, Guerrero' s land, took the grants and broke them up and growled and quarreled over them, those frantic hungry men; and they guarded with guns the land they had stolen. They put up houses and barns, they turned the earth and planted crops. And these things were possession, and possession was ownership.The Mexicans were weak and fed. They could not resist, because they wanted nothing in the world as frantically as the Americans wanted land."
39
"I think people in general have neglected to learn about history."
39
"The current state of knowledge is a moment in history, changing just as rapidly as the state of knowledge in the past has ever changed and, in many instances, more rapidly."
38
"My object will be, first, to show by what connections the history of the fossil bones of land animals is linked to the theory of the earth and why they have a particular importance in this respect."
38
"Mexico and the U.S. are bound not only because of the common border, but by a shared culture and history."
37
"Germany expected that at the most a day or so would see Belgian resistance broken and the dash on Paris begun. It was not safe to start such a forward rush with Belgium unconquered."
37
"Literature is the expression of a feeling of deprivation, a recourse against a sense of something missing. But the contrary is also true: language is what makes us human. It is a recourse against the meaningless noise and silence of nature and history."
37
"I think I'm the only actor in the history of film who got to slap Sam Jackson on the face and butt and lived to tell about it."
37
"Journalism allows its readers to witness history; fiction gives its readers an opportunity to live it."
36
"History shows that where ethics and economics come in conflict, victory is always with economics. Vested interests have never been known to have willingly divested themselves unless there was sufficient force to compel them."
36
"I did this within a philosophical framework, and a moral and legal framework. And I have been turned into a cartoon of the greatest villain in the history of lobbying."
36
"Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill."
35
"It takes an endless amount of history to make even a little tradition."
35
"History is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind."
34
"The principle that human nature, in its psychological aspects, is nothing more than a product of history and given social relations removes all barriers to coercion and manipulation by the powerful."
34
"Remember that in every single case in history the process of adaptation has been one of exceeding slowness. Do not look for the impossible, but do not let your path deviate from the quiet and steadfast insistence on full opportunities for your powers."
34
"I got a call to come in and meet Fox, and the rest is history."
33
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