Best 5189 quotes in «history quotes» category

In philosophy, it is not the attainment of the goal that matters, it is the things that are met with by the way

In popular government results worth while can only be achieved by men who combine worthy ideals with practical good sense.

In populous cities, which are the seat of commerce and manufactures, the middle ranks of inhabitants, who derive their subsistence from the dexterity or labour of their hands, are commonly the most prolific, the most useful, and, in that sense, the most respectable part of the community.

In prison we are their jailers On trial their judges Persecuted their punishers Dead their conquerors

In schoolbooks and in literature we can separate ecclesiastical and political history; in the life of mankind they are intertwined.

In scorn of nature, art gave lifeless life.

In solitude we have our dreams to ourselves, and in company we agree to dream in concert.

In Stalin's Russia racial persecution was often disguised as class warfare. More than 1.5 million members of ethnic minorities died as a result of forced resettlement.

Instead of pressing, with the foremost of the crowd, into the palace of Constantinople, Libanius calmly expected his arrival at Antioch; withdrew from court on the first symptoms of coldness and indifference; required a formal invitation for each visit; and taught his sovereign an important lesson, that he might command the obedience of a subject, but that he must deserve the attachment of a friend.

In strategy the longest way round is often the shortest way there- a direct approach to the object exhausts the attacker and hardens the resistance by compression, whereas an indirect approach loosens the defender's hold by upsetting his balance.

Instructed by history and reflection, Julian was persuaded that, if the diseases of the body may sometimes be cured by salutary violence, neither steel nor fire can eradicate the erroneous opinions of the mind.

In the end, history, especially British history with its succession of thrilling illuminations, should be, as all her most accomplished narrators have promised, not just instruction but pleasure.

In the end, the character of a civilization is encased in its structures.

In the history of the United States, there is no continuity at all. You can cut through it anywhere and nothing on this side of the cut has anything to do with anything on the other side.

In the history of the individual is always an account of his condition, and he knows himself to be a party to his present estate.

In the long course of history, having people who understand your thought is much greater security than another submarine.

In the last resort, sheer insight is the greatest asset of all.

In the tumult of men and events, solitude was my temptation; now it is my friend. What other satisfaction can be sought once you have confronted History?

In the United States those bits of our history that remain are paved over, sanitized, packaged for easy consumption. At those sites not already lost to commercial development, we walk between velvet ropes, herded by guides, warned not to touch. Our icons are preserved under glass, their magic demystified in glossy brochures.

Inventors and geniuses have almost always been looked on as no better than fools at the beginning of their career, and very frequently at the end of it also.

In war, whichever side may call itself the victor, there are no winners, but all are losers.

I said there was but one solitary thing about the past worth remembering, and that was the fact that it is past-can't be restored.

I shall show the cinders of my spirits Through the ashes of my chance.

Is life worth living? This is a question for an embryo not for a man.

Is he a good man?" "Define 'good'.

I should like to abolish funerals; the time to mourn a person is at his birth, not his death.

Is not that state a warning and a judgment for our heavy sins as a nation?

I still feel-kind of temporary about myself.

Israel was born out of Jewish terrorism. Jewish terrorists hanged two British sergeants and booby-trapped their corpses.

I suppose this work is part of the devil that is in us all.

Italy is only a geographical expression.

I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.

It does seem so pleasant to talk with an old acquaintance who knows what you know. I see so many new folks nowadays who seem to have neither past nor future. Conversation has got to have some root in the past, or else you have got to explain every remark you make, and it wears a person out.

It has become too easy to see that the luckless men of the past lived by mistakes, even absurd beliefs, so we may well fail in a decent respect for them, and forget that historians of the future will point out that we too lived by myths.

It has been so written, for the most part, that the times it describes are with remarkable propriety called dark ages. They are dark, as one has observed, because we are so in the dark about them.

I think it would be an excellent idea.

I think by the age of about nine I recognized that there were a lot of different religions, and it was an accident I happened to be born into one of them. If I had been born somewhere else, I would have had a different one. Which is a pretty good lesson, actually. Everyone should learn that.

It is hard to think of anything which more tragically and clearly exemplifies the phenomenon of good political intentions achieving the precise opposite of their aim.

It is almost inconceivable that citizens of that time were willing to support so bloody a war, by putting so high a price upon Union and Liberty.

It is evil things that we will be fighting against-brute force, bad faith, injustice, oppression and persecution-and against them I am certain that the right will prevail.

It is incumbent on us diligently to remember that the kingdom of heaven was promised to the poor in spirit, and that minds afflicted by calamity and the contempt of mankind cheerfully listen to the divine promise of future happiness; while, on the contrary, the fortunate are satisfied with the possession of this world; and the wise abuse in doubt and dispute their vain superiority of reason and knowledge.

It is magnificent, but it is not war.

It is a mark of civilised man that he seeks to understand his traditions, and to criticise them, not to swallow them whole.

It is as painful perhaps to be awakened from a vision as to be born.

It is bad luck for world history that of all people the Russians adopted Communism, because they are totally unfit for it.

It is necessary for me to establish a winner image. Therefore, I have to beat somebody.

It is not as late as you think. It is merely early - in the age of the rebirth of individualism.

It is not a sin to introduce a personal bias that can be recognized and discounted. The sin in historical composition is the organization of the story in such a way that bias cannot be recognized.

It is not reason that gives us our moral orientation, it is sensitivity.

it is not the inferiority of women that has caused their historical insignificance; it is rather their historical insignificance that has doomed them to inferiority.