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History Quotes
"Captain Cook discovered Australia looking for the Terra Incognita. Christopher Columbus thought he was finding India but discovered America. History is full of events that happened because of an imaginary tale."
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"There was a loud shuffling above. A line of redcoats took their position at the edge of the ravine and aimed down at the rebels. 'Present!' the British officer screamed to his men. 'Present!' yelled the American officer. His men brought the butts of their muskets up to their shoulders and sighted down the long barrels, ready to shoot and kill. I pressed my face into the earth, unable to plan a course of escape. My mind would not be mastered and thought only of the wretched, lying, foul, silly girl who was the cause of everything. I thought of Isabel and I missed her. 'FIRE!"
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"Scholars discern motions of history & formulate these motions into rules that govern the rises & falls of civilizations. My belief runs contrary, however. To wit: history admits no rules, only outcomes. What precipitates outcomes? Vicious acts and virtuous acts. What precipitates acts? Belief."
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"Perhaps that is the greatest crime of conquest--that a civilization is denied the right to evolve beyond its own embarrassment."
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"In 1857, the aadivasis of Dahod presented most challenging situations for the British in the region. As we mark the 70th freedom year, I bow down to the countless aadivasis and freedom fighters for their sacrifices."
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"History is always changing behind us, and the past changes a little every time we retell it."
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"You mean you've been in this same set of rooms here for... two hundred years?' murmured Richard. 'You'd think someone would notice, or think it was odd.''Oh, that's one of the delights of the older Cambridge colleges,' said Reg, 'everyone is so discreet. If we all went around mentioning what was odd about each other we'd be here till Christmas."
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"History is no more fixed and dead than the future. The past is no further away than the last breath you took."
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"If history is going to repeat itself I should think we can expect the same thing again."
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"To begin with, I turn back time. I reverse it to that quaint period, the thirties, when the huge middle class of America was matriculating in a school for the blind. Their eyes had failed them, or they had failed their eyes, and so they were having their fingers pressed forcibly down on the fiery Braille alphabet of a dissolving economy."
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"Sodomy is as old as the human species."
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"The walking tour guides one through the city's various landmarks, reciting bits of information the listener might find enlightening. I learned, for example, that in the late 1500s my little neighborhood square was a popular spot for burning people alive. Now lined with a row of small shops, the tradition continues, though in a figurative rather than literal sense."
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"After we were hit on September 11, 2001, we were in a state of national shock. Less than six weeks later, on October 26 2001, the U.S.A. Patriot Act was passed by a Congress that had little chance to debate it; many said that they scarcely had time to read it."
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"She saw and marked the revolutions that had been, and the present seemed to her only a point of rest, from which time was to renew his flight."
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"Who does not know the evils of war cannot appreciate its benefits."
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"The action of social revolution and the reaction of guarding against such revolution or combating it once it has begun are the causes of a great deal of the human misery with which history is permeated."
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"Human history seems to me to be one long story of people sweeping down-or up, I suppose-replacing other people in the process."
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"Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please."
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"History is not like some individual person, which uses men to achieve its ends. History is nothing but the actions of men in pursuit of their ends."
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"The error in this conclusion may be most simply demonstrated by means of an actual example. Let us select for this purpose the monetary history of Austria, which Laughlin also uses as an illustration. From 1859 onwards the Austrian National Bank was released from the obligation to convert its notes on demand into silver, and nobody could tell when the State paper-money issued in 1866 would be redeemed, or even if it would be redeemed at all. It was not until the later 'nineties that the transition to metallic money was completed by the actual resumption of cash payments on the part of the Austro-Hungarian Bank."
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"Where I'm from, we believe in all sorts of things that aren't true... we call it history."
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"I did not say anything. I was always embarrassed by the words sacred, glorious, and sacrifice and the expression in vain. We had heard them, sometimes standing in the rain almost out of earshot, so that only the shouted words came through, and had read them on proclamations that were slapped up by billposters over other proclamations, now for a long time, and I had seen nothing sacred, and the things that were glorious had no glory and the sacrifices were like the stock yards at Chicago if nothing was done with the meat except to bury it."
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"...Jesus was only twelve years old. Jesus was learning the carpentry trade from his father.Two Roman soldiers came into the shop with a mechanical drawing on papyrus of a device they wanted built by sunrise the next morning. It was a cross to be used in the execution of a rabble-rouser.Jesus and his father built it. They were glad to have the work. And the rabble-rouser was executed on it.So it goes."
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"History is a madman's museum."
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"Malignant phenomena do not come out of a golden age."
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"This land on which so many centuries have left their mark is merely an obligatory retreat for you, whereas it has always been our dearest hope. Your too sudden passion is made up of spite and necessity."
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"With time, many staged photographs turn back into historical evidence, albeit of an impure kind - like most historical evidence."
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"Lady Placida smiled. "History seldom takes note of serendipity when it records events. And from what I have heard, I suspect an argument could be made that you very much did earn the title."Many women have earned titles, Your Grace. It doesn't seem to have been a factor in whether or not they actually received them.Lady Placida laughed. "True enough. But perhaps that is beginning to change. She offered her hands. "It is a distinct pleasure to meet you, Steadholder."
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"All of history has pointed its refining focus to your life this moment."
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"The sight of so many ruins destroys any desire to build shanties, all this ancient dust makes one indifferent to fame."
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"Every city is a ghost.New buildings rise upon the bones of the old so that each shiny steel bean, each tower of brick carries within it the memories of what has gone before, an architectural haunting. Sometimes you can catch a glimpse of these former incarnations in the awkward angle of a street or filigreed gate, an old oak door peeking out from a new facade, the plaque commemorating the spot that was once a battleground, which became a saloon and is now a park."
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