Best 5189 quotes in «history quotes» category

To the extent that the judicial profession becomes the daily routine of deciding cases on the most secure precedents and the narrowest grounds available, the judicial mind atrophies and its perspective shrinks.

To the love of pleasure we may therefore ascribe most of the agreeable, to the love of action we may attribute most of the useful and respectable, qualifications. The character in which both the one and the other should be united and harmonised would seem to constitute the most perfect idea of human nature.

To those of you who seek lost objects of history, I wish you the best of luck. They're out there, and they're whispering.

Toughness doesn't have to come in a pinstripe suit.

Tradition usually rests upon something which men did know; history is often the manufacture of the mere liar.

Tragedy is a tool for the living to gain wisdom, not a guide by which to live.

Treason doth never prosper. What's the reason? Why, when it prospers, none dare call it treason.

Truth comes to us from the past, as gold is washed down from the mountains of Sierra Nevada, in minute but precious particles, and intermixed with infinite alloy, the debris of the centuries.

Truth is the only merit that gives dignity and worth to history.

Truth, naked, unblushing truth, the first virtue of all serious history, must be the sole recommendation of this personal narrative.

Truth travels slowly, but it will reach even you in time.

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.

Under a democratical government the citizens exercise the powers of sovereignty; and those powers will be first abused, and afterwards lost, if they are committed to an unwieldy multitude.

Understanding the past requires pretending that you don't know the present.

Universal education is the most corroding and disintegrating poison that liberalism has ever invented for its own destruction.

Usually, terrible things that are done with the excuse that progress requires them are not really progress at all, but just terrible things.

Very few of the great leaders ever get through their careers without failing, sometimes dramatically.

Virtue is its own reward. There's a pleasure in doing good which sufficiently pays itself.

Viewed narrowly, all life is universal hunger and an expression of energy associated with it.

Very few things happen at the right time, and the rest do not happen at all. The conscientious historian will correct these defects.

Wars usually have the effect of speeding up the process of history.

War is an option of difficulties.

war with poison and chemicals was not so rare in the ancient world ... An astounding panoply of toxic substances, venomous creatures, poison plants, animals and insects, deleterious environments, virulent pathogens, infectious agents, noxious gases, and combustible chemicals were marshalled to defeat foes - and panoply is an apt term here, because it is the ancient Greek word for 'all weapons.

We always admire the other person more after we've tried to do his job.

We all of us live upon the past, and through the past we are destroyed.

We are all worms. But I believe that I am a glow-worm.

We are all citizens of history.

We are Americans, speaking the same language, adopting the same customs, holding the same general opinions... and shall rise and fall with Americans.

We are bound to lose Ireland in consequence of years of cruelty, stupidity and misgovernment and I would rather lose her as a friend than as a foe.

We are living in a demented world. And we know it. It would not come as a surprise to anyone if tomorrow the madness gave way to afrenzy which would leave our poor Europe in a state of distracted stupor, with engines still turning and flags streaming in the breeze, but with the spirit gone.

We are human beings, and this is the part of our human nature, that we don't learn the importance of anything until it's snatched from our hands.

We are not interested in the possibilities of defeat. They do not exist.

We are going to inherit the earth . There is not the slightest doubt about that. The bourgeoisie may blast and burn its own world before it finally leaves the stage of history. We Are not afraid of ruins. We who ploughed the prairies and built the cities can build again, only better next time. We carry a new world, here in our hearts. That world is growing this minute.

We are never completely contemporaneous with our present. History advances in disguise; it appears on stage wearing a mask of the preceding scene, and we tend to lose the meaning of the play.

We can stand only a certain amount of unhappiness; anything beyond that annihilates us or passes us by, leaving us apathethetic.

We are the first nation in the history of the world to go to the poorhouse in an automobile.

We as women know that there are no disembodied processes; that all history originates in human flesh; that all oppression is inflicted by the body of one against the body of another; that all social change is built on the bone and muscle, and out of the flesh and blood, of human creators.

We believe that the history of the world is but the history of His influence and that the center of the whole universe is the cross of Calvary.

We are the prisoners of history. Or are we?

We boast our emancipation from many superstitions; but if we have broken any idols, it is through a transfer of idolatry.

We cannot adopt the way of living that was satisfactory a hundred years ago. The world in which we live has changed, and we must change with it.

We deny the right of any portion of the species to decide for another portion what is and what is not their 'proper sphere.' The proper sphere for all human beings is the largest and highest which they are able to attain to.

We did not realise how fragile our civilisation was.

We decipherers cannot afford to be as picky as the linguist, who can always run back to a native speaker for a few more forms.

We don't want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker's dam is the history we make today.

We got 16,000 wonderful vehicles. We got all the steel that we make our tanks out of. Of course, we couldn't have done without Western aid.

We get our ethics from our history and judge our history by our ethics.

We had to do what we had to do - Britain is great again.

We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the sermon on the mount.

We have known the bitterness of defeat and the exultation of triumph, and from both we have learned there can be no turning back. We must go forward to preserve in peace what we won in war.