Best 5189 quotes in «history quotes» category

The fame of his likes circulates briskly but soon grows heavy and stale; and as for history it will limit his life story to the dash between two dates.

The feminine section of the proletarian army is of particularly great significance... the success of a revolution depends on the extent to which women take part in it.

The first Embassy to Afghanistan by a western power left the Company's Delhi Residency on 13 October 1808, with the Ambassador accompanied by 200 calvary, 4,000 infantry, a dozen elephants and no fewer than 600 camels. It was dazzling, but it was also clear from this attempt to reach out to the Afghans that the British were not interested in cultivating Shah Shuja's friendship for its own sake, but were concerned only to outflank their imperial rivals: the Afghans were perceived as mere pawns on the chessboard of western diplomacy, to be engaged or sacrificed at will. It was a precedent that was to be followed many other times, by several different powers, over the years and decades to come; and each time the Afghans would show themselves capable of defending their inhospitable terrain far more effectively than any of their would-be manipulators could possibly have suspected.

The first step in liquidating a people,' said Hubl, 'is to erase its memory. Destroy its books, its culture, its history. Then have somebody write new books, manufacture a new culture, invent a new history. Before long the nation will begin to forget what it is and what it was. The world around it will forget even faster.

The first thing I encountered on entering the museum was the earliest steam engine built in England. As I walked on, marveling at each successive mechanical wonder, I realized that I was witnessing the history of machinery, as if on parade, from its primitive beginnings to the present day, in all its complex and astounding elaborations. Henry Ford's so-called "pile of scrap iron" was organized not only with scientific clarity but with impeccable, unpretentious good taste. Relics of the times associated with each machine were displayed beside it. To me, Greenfield Village, inside and out, was a visual feast.

The forgiveness of God flows through me and because I am forgiven, I can forgive.

The flood myth motif is widespread among many cultures, as seen in Mesopotamian flood stories, the Puranas (ancient Hindu texts), in the Greek Deucalion mythology, the lore of the K'iche' and Maya peoples of Central America, as well as the Muisca people of present day Colombia in South America. In fact, there are oral traidition stories pertaining to this concept from antiquity, from cultures of Sumeria, Babylonia, Germany, Ireland, Finland, the Maasai of Africa, Egypt, India, Turkestan, China, Korea, Malaysia, Lao, Australia, Polynesia, and Native people of North America, Mesoamerica and South America... to name just a handful.

The formula Muscovy + Ukraine = Russia does not feature in the Russians’ own version of their history; but it is fundamental.

The fourteen million were murdered over the course of only twelve years, between 1933 and 1945, while both Hitler and Stalin were in power.

The French political class has been relentlessly myopic, if not completely blind, about the concerns of those who work and mine and farm. .... To cite Eugene Weber, "One thing that we learn from history is that people seldom learn from history.

The fourteenth century saw a transformation in the diet of the English lower classes from one composed mainly of cheap cereals, beans and pulses, with coarse black bread (made from rye or barley) and the occasional flitch of bacon to one with a high proportion of meat, particularly beef and mutton, and bread made from wheat.

The French by their nature had a permanent hunger for sensation. This was even more true of the eighteenth century, of which that considerable expert Victor du Bled remarked that no other age was ever so bored.

The frontier will nevertheless survive in the attitudes a few of us inherited from it. One of those attitudes--to me a beatitude--is the conviction that the past matters, that history weighs on us and refuses to be forgotten by us, and that the worst poverty women--or men--can suffer is to be bereft of their past.

The Fukushima nuclear complex went on to become the worst man-made engineering disaster in all of human history, outside of war.

The fundamental difference between ideology, and its various forms, such as politics, history, religion, ethics, morality, and so on, and science is that the former just offers certain preferences to a person to think and to analyze the reality, but the latter urge a person to abandon all these preferences and neutralize the mind towards reality. Ideology can never be more than subjective valued judgment, but science must be free from this judgment. Ideology is intended for the masses with little, or no rational and analytical thinking, but science for intellectuals for whom rational thinking carries in itself a primary value. The masses can never engage in a genuine science, in similar way, no true intellectual can be an ideologist, because any ideological presupposition would deprive him of his rational and analytical thinking, or reduce it to a considerable extent. Free rational thinking on the base of empirical scientific facts often force you to go against various wide-spread forms of ideology with its all above-mentioned forms.

The fundamental principle of the Russian government has always been the autocratic ruler who combines all legislative and executive powers and disposes of all the nation's resources.

The gap that was created during those transatlantic voyages hundreds of years ago. That gap is the matrix of Saudade – The Longing, I think, that all Africans in the West have, that is at the root of the blues and jazz and soul and rap. If you listen you can hear it, elusive, fleeting, full of melancholy anger.

The Germans murdered about as many non-Jews as Jews during the war, chiefly by starving Soviet prisoners of war (more than three million) and residents of besieged cities (more than a million) or by shooting civilians in “reprisals” (the better part of a million, chiefly Belarusians and Poles).

The ghost stories were fascinating, made even more so by the personal connection between the living and the long-departed. The ghosts seemed content to be there. The truly amazing part of the story, however, was how happy the owner and staff of the inn were with their spirits. It made me want to stay there… and perhaps never leave.

The ghosts of Manhattan are not the spirits of the propertied classes; these are entombed in their names, their works, their constructions. New York's ghosts are the unresting souls of the poor, the marginal, the dispossessed, the depraved, the defective, the recalcitrant. They are the guardian spirits of the urban wilderness in which they lived and died. Unrecognized by the history that is common knowledge, they push invisibly behind it to erect their memorials in the collective unconscious.

The good shall prevail in the end, the truth shall be the rule and the Cameroonian soul shall be free,” Hans said in an emotion-choked voice, “However, we should never lose our heads; we should always be prepared to forgive all the repentant souls.

The government, which was designed for the people, has got into the hands of the bosses and their employers, the special interests. An invisible empire has been set up above the forms of democracy.” Woodrow Wilson, twenty-eighth President of the United States of America. Served 1913–1921. President during World War I, only President to be interred within Washington, DC, at the National Cathedral.

The grain of evil seed had been sown in the heart of Adam from the beginning, and how much ungodliness had it brought up unto this time? and how much shall it yet bring forth until the time of threshing come?

The gospel is not mere forgiveness or grace, empty of content, but always refers to Jesus. So the gospel is good news about a human person who is God in our history, our world and who came to accomplish something in his life death and resurrection.

[T]he greater the sense of awe with which a text was regarded, the more complete might be the amnesia as to the original circumstances of its composition.

​The great conqueror, Jenghiz Khan, the son of sad, stern, severe Mongolia, according to an old Mongolian legend "mounted to the top of Karasu Togol and with his eyes of an eagle looked to the west and the east. In the west he saw whole seas of human blood over which floated a bloody fog that blanketed all the horizon. There he could not discern his fate. But the gods ordered him to proceed to the west, leading with him all his warriors and Mongolian tribes. To the east he saw wealthy towns, shining temples, crowds of happy people, gardens and fields of rich earth, all of which pleased the great Mongol. He said to his sons: 'There in the west I shall be fire and sword, destroyer, avenging Fate; in the east I shall come as the merciful, great builder, bringing happiness to the people and to the land.'".

The greatest act of domestic terrorism in the history of the USA is currently in process and the culprits are the energy, electrical, electronics and wireless radiation industries.

The greatest changes in history have come because people were able to shake off what others told them to do.

The greatest futility! says the congregator, "The greatest futility! Everything is futile!" What does a person gain from all his hard work- At which he toils under the sun? A generation goes and another cometh forth, but the earth remains the same.

The greatest innovators and history makers of our world were not great because of the formal school system but because of self-development through the proper investment and conversation of time.

The greatest literature is the Biblical stories.

The Guti were a band of mountain barbarians. It's always the way, isn't it? Everything is blamed on 'the barbarians

The hardest task for the historian… is to consider the evidence without prejudice. We all have prior agendas and tend to find what we’re looking for while ignoring anything contrary to our expectations. So history, because it is a human pursuit, is always partial and prejudiced no less than our own interior lives: both are just a sum of contingent memories.

The height of human achievement and glory, Muhammad.

The heirs of Jefferson and Madison would be the Democratic-Republicans, the heirs of Hamilton and Adams would be the Federalists. But the heirs of Washington would be all Americans.

The historian, on the contrary, cannot experiment and can rarely observe. Instead, the historian has to collect his own evidence, knowing, all the while, that some of it is useless and much of it unreliable." -Professor Charles Homer Haskins

The historian has a habit of saying of people in the past: 'I think they may well be considered worthy of praise, allowing for the ideas of their times.' There will never be really good history until the historian says, ‘I think they were worthy of praise, allowing for the ideas of my time.

The historian’s task is not to disrupt for the sake of it, but it is to tell what is almost always an uncomfortable story and explain why the discomfort is part of the truth we need to live well and live properly. A well organized society is one in which we know the truth about ourselves collectively, not one in which we tell pleasant lies about ourselves.

The historic moment is always simple and brief: it belongs to one man and one will alone, without possibility (if it be truly ripe) of any confusion of rights. The council’s surprise was their consent. They bowed themselves out of the room and also out of the story

The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guildmaster and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, that each time ended, either in the revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.

The history of the atom -- it's not just a military secret and a curse. It's also our youth, our era, our religion.

The historic atmosphere was there, certainly; but the historic atmosphere, scientifically considered, was no better than a villainous miasma

The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.

The history of our time must be well-captured and documented.

The history of the astronomy of the nineteenth century will be incomplete without a catalogue of his labours. He was one of the founders of the Astronomical Society, and his attention to its affairs was as accurate and minute as if it had been a firm of which he was the chief clerk, with expectation of being taken into partnership.

The history of time is captured by poet, artist, writer, photographer…!

The Hudson Burlesque Of all the theaters I miss from that era, the Hudson Theatre tops the list. It was built in what was then called Union Hill, early in December 1907. We called it the Hudson Burlesque, and it featured striptease artists such as Lili St. Cyr, Gypsy Rose Lee and Tempest Storm. Being too young to get into the theatre on my own, I usually offered an adult standing in line some money to take me in. Once inside, I would head for the front of the theatre to the fire exit on the right side of the orchestra seating. It was all prearranged with my friends waiting outside! With one kick, the door would open, allowing them to come streaming in. There were not enough ushers to catch us all, so some of us would invariably be caught and evicted, only to try to gain access again. It was all great fun! “I don't think there is such a thing as being too raunchy when it comes to the art form of burlesque.” Christina Aguilera, American singer-songwriter and actress. From the upcoming book “Seawater One.

The human will be the only mammal in history to fully understand that its own self inflicted extinction is well underway.

The idea that this end of philosophy— at least, of political philosophy and (I claim) moral philosophy— has close relations with history overlaps with a more ambitious view held by a consistently underestimated Oxford philosopher, R. G. Collingwood. The trouble with Collingwood’s kind of commitment is that it requires one to know some history. My two associates in the view I am sketching are Alasdair MacIntyre and Charles Taylor. They are both Roman Catholics, though of different sorts. I used to find this a disquieting fact but no longer do so. All three of us, I could say, accept the significant role of Christianity in understanding modern moral consciousness, and adopt respectively the three possible views about how to move in relation to that: backward in it, forward in it, and out of it. In any case, we all assume some historical commitments, they on a more ambitious scale than I, and perhaps there is a rather nervous competition for who writes the most irresponsible history.

The idea that in prehistoric times a man would spend his life hunting only for the benefit of his own wife and children, who were dependent solely upon his hunting prowess for survival, is simply a projection of 1950s marital norms onto the past.