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History Quotes
"We also have to make sure our children know the history of women. Tell them the rotten truth: It wasn't always possible for women to become doctors or managers or insurance people. Let them be armed with a true picture of the way we want it to be."
16
"As sure as time, history is repeating itself, and as sure as man is man, history is the last place he'll look for his lessons."
16
"The more you know of your history, the more liberated you are."
16
"When Henry Ford made cheap, reliable cars people said, 'Nah, what's wrong with a horse?' That was a huge bet he made, and it worked."
16
"The European wars of religion were more deadly than the First World War, proportionally speaking, and in the range of the Second World War in Europe. The Inquisition, the persecution of heretics and infidels and witches, they racked up pretty high death tolls."
16
"The history of every major galactic civilisation tends to pass through three distinct and recognisable phases, those of Survival, Enquiry and Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why and Where phases. For instance, the first phase is characterised by the question How can we eat?, the second by the question Why do we eat?, and the third but the question Where shall we have lunch?"
16
"The purpose of a chronicler of moods and deeds does not require him to express his personal views upon the grave controversy above given."
16
"Here we find the roots of American wealth and democracy-in the for-profit destruction of the most important asset available to any people, the family. The destruction was not incidental to America's rise; it facilitated that rise. By erecting a slave society, America created the economic foundation for its great experiment in democracy."
16
"A great empire, like a great cake, is most easily diminished at the edges."
16
"In the history of battles and wars, the massacres of civilians were the main reason of revolutions success."
16
"There is no life that does not contribute to history."
16
"When the hunt for new sources of energy had at one point got particularly frantic, one bright young chap suddenly spotted that one place which had never used up all its available energy was - the past. And with the sudden rush of blood to the head that such insights tend to induce, he invented a way of mining it that very same night, and within a year huge tracts of the past were being drained of all their energy and simply wasting away. Those who claimed that the past should be left unspoilt were accused of indulgingin an extremely expensive form of sentimentality."
15
"An important part of what the state does is preserving its history."
15
"There'd never been a more advantageous time to be a criminal in America than during the 13 years of Prohibition. At a stroke, the American government closed down the fifth largest industry in the United States - alcohol production - and just handed it to criminals - a pretty remarkable thing to do."
15
"Back in medieval times, " I said, "we used oil of vitriol for its healing properties. No doubt that's why Commodus had some in his infirmary. Today we call it sulfuric acid."Meg flinched. "Isn't that dangerous?""Very.""And you *healed* with it?""It was the Middle Ages. We were crazy back then."
15
"My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that."
15
"Nearly everything that happened had happened before. The grand lesson of history."
15
"Her screams are heard across generations who dared not scream and died without joy,in silence and isolation."
15
"That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons of history."
15
"He was Antinous, wild. You would have said, seeing the thoughtful reflection of his eye, that he had already, in some preceding existence, been through the revolutionary apocalypse. He knew its tradition like an eyewitness. He knew every little detail of that great thing.A pontifical and warrior nature, strange in a youth. He was officiating and militant; from the immediate point of view, a soldier of democracy; above the movement of the time, a priest of the ideal."
15
"The brave soldiers die. The cowards survive and write the history."
15
"The game of history is usually played by the best and the worst over the heads of the majority in the middle."
15
"And that, ...is the story of our country, one invasion after another...Macedonians. Saddanians. Arabs. Mongols. Now the Soviets. But we're like those walls up there. Battered, and nothing pretty to look at, but still standing."
15
"It was my Uncle George who discovered that alcohol was a food well in advance of modern medical thought."
15
"If anyone thinks they'd rather be in a different part of history, they're probably not a very good student of history. Life sucked in the old days. People knew very little, and you were likely to die at a young age of some horrible disease. You'd probably have no teeth by now. It would be particularly awful if you were a woman."
15
"The fact is that certain themes cannot be celebrated in words, and tyranny is one of them. No one ever wrote a good book in praise of the Inquisition."
15
"It is not acceptable that election winners interpret history. History should be left to historians who have a difficult task. They should try to avoid a one-sided or personal interpretation of history. Furthermore, some collective factors (such as national enthusiasm) may influence objectivity that is crucial for the interpretation of historical events."
15
"Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation."
15
"One if by land, two if by sea."
15
"As for national greatness: It is probably true that all nations are great and even holy at the time of death. The Biafrans had never fought before. They fought well this time. They will never fight again. They will never play Finlandia on an ancient marimba again. Peace."
15
"I do not know if he had a name, but I called him North, an appellation I think Beck would have approved of, for it was the name the Dutch called the Hudson River when they first came here, when men set to changing the world in their image, and gave all the wild things their own names."
15
"History's like a story in a way: it depends on who's telling it."
15
"This western-front business couldn't be done again, not for a long time. The young men think they could do it but they couldn't. They could fight the first Marne again but not this. This took religion and years of plenty and tremendous sureties and the exact relation that existed between the classes. The Russians and Italians weren't any good on this front. You had to have a whole-souled sentimental equipment going back further than you could remember. You had to remember Christmas, and postcards of the Crown Prince and his fiancA©e, and little cafA©s in Valence and beer gardens in Unter den Linden and weddings at the mairie, and going to the Derby, and your grandfather's whiskers."
15
"There were no mail-order catalogues in 1492. Marco Polo's journal was the wish book of Renaissance Europe. Then, Columbus sailed the ocean blue and landed in Sears' basement. Despite all the Indians on the escalator, Columbus' visit came to be known as a "discovery."
15
"Thus, Dr. Curry's claims that much of the fanfare and propaganda we now attribute to the Hitler Youth and the Nuremberg rallies actually originated with American customs, are definitely sound."
15
"Well before September 11, it was understood that with modern technology, the rich and powerful will lose their near monopoly of the means of violence and can expect to suffer atrocities on home soil."
15
"For all these stars,nothing is new.They've seen all kinds of warsand miracles, too.They know the messengers with their holy bookswill smile and wash their hands in blood.They know the politicians with their good lookswill make the poor eat pies of mud.They've seen the Earth freeze and then burn with greed.They've seen the treesand the seas emptied.Yet, you won't hear their sneerswhen a man arrivesand, having experienced a number of years,proclaims: 'I have lived!'Because nothing is new under these stars:the lies, the love, the memories and scars, the ruin, the revolution, the fakes and true,the families, the friends, none of it is new.All of it-even the me and you."
15
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