Best 5189 quotes in «history quotes» category

Revolution, in order to be creative, cannot do without either a moral or metaphysical rule to balance the insanity of history.

Revisionism is a healthy historiographical process, and no one, not even revisionists, should be exempt from it.

Revolution calls my name. I will soon dwell in nothingness, and my name will be in the Pantheon of history.

Russians can give you arms but only the United States can give you a solution.

Sanity is madness put to good use.

Science has penetrated the constitution of nature, and unrolled the mysterious pages of its history, and started again many, as yet, unanswered questions in respect to the mutual relations of matter and spirit, of nature and of God.

Science, history and politics are not suited for discussion except by experts. Others are simply in the position of requiring more information; and, till they have acquired all available information, cannot do anything but accept on authority the opinions of those better qualified.

Secret Societies have existed among all peoples, savage and civilized, since the beginning of recorded history... It is beyond question that the secret societies of all ages have exercised a considerable degree of political influence.

Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty.

Selfness is an essential fact of life. The thought of nonselfness, precise sameness is terrifying.

September 11th was a moment when America had the sympathy of the world.

Shakespeare, who never could think up a plot by himself, found this one [Macbeth] in Holinshed's Chronicles, changing it just enough so that no one would recognize the source. He didn't count on the resourcefulness of modern scholars, who have to discover things like this to become associate professors.

Since history has no properly scientific value, its only purpose is educative. And if historians neglect to educate the public, if they fail to interest it intelligently in the past, then all their historical learning is valueless except in so far as it educates themselves.

Shiloh had as many casualties as Waterloo, and yet there were another 20 Waterloos to come.

Since God himself cannot change the past, He is obliged to tolerate the existence of historians.

Since historical reconstruction is a rational process, only justified and indeed possible if it involves the human reason, what we call history is the mess we call life reduced to some order. pattern and possibly purpose.

Since the dawn of history, mankind has honoured and respected brave and honest people.

Sin writes histories, goodness is silent. [Ger., Das Uebel macht eine Geschichte und das Gute keine.]

Since when have we Americans been expected to bow submissively to authority and speak with awe and reverence to those who represent us?

Sin writes histories, goodness is silent.

Sitting at the table doesn’t make you a diner, unless you eat some of what’s on that plate. Being here in America doesn’t make you an American. Being born here in America doesn’t make you an American.

Skepticism is history's bedfellow.

Societies that do not eat people are fascinated by those that do.

Soon we will be strangers. No, we can never be that. Hurting someone is an act of reluctant intimacy. We will be dangerous acquaintances with a history.

Some creatures are made to see in the dark.

Something as curious as the monarchy won't survive unless you take account of people's attitudes. After all, if people don't want it, they won't have it.

somewhere about the eighteenth century, history tacitly replaced religion as the school of public morals.

Some commentators have drawn such a stark and gloomy picture of the Weimar Republic's early difficulties that the Republic seems foredoomed to failure from the outset... The conditions in which Weimar democracy were born were certainly not such as to help it flourish; and as it unfolded, it was clearly saddled with a burden of problems, in a range of areas.

Some history-making is intentional; much of it is accidental.

Stern accuracy in inquiring, bold imagination in describing, these are the cogs on which history soars or flutters and wobbles.

Strange, (is it not?) that battles, martyrs, blood, even assassination should so condense - perhaps only really lastingly condense - a Nationality.

Strange are the ways of history, where no single thing abides, but all things flow into each other, fragment to fragment clinging.

Study history, study history. In history lie all the secrets of statecraft.

Such events may be disbelieved or disregarded; but the charity of a bishop, Acacius of Amida, whose name might have dignified the saintly calendar, shall not be lost in oblivion.

Such were garrulous and noisy eras, which no longer yield any sound, but the Grecian or silent and melodious era is ever soundingand resounding in the ears of men.

Summation of Leviathan: "The axiom, fear; the method, logic; the conclusion, despotism.

Take from the altars of the past the fire - not the ashes.

Symbolic rearrangement of the past is of course an unavoidable aspect of all human attempts to make sense of the present.

That is the supreme value of history. The study of it is the best guarantee against repeating it.

Tell the FBI that the kidnappers should pick out a judge that Nixon wants back.

Terrorism is the best political weapon for nothing drives people harder than a fear of sudden death.

[T]hat is the triumph of history - truth absolute is not at hand; the original with which to match the copy does not exist.

Taxation, the very thing that had triggered the British civil wars, would do so again, this time in America. The taxes may have been different, but the result would once again be disaster. What happened in America was really round two of those wars - the civil war of the British Empire, with the Hanoverians playing the part of the Stuarts, and the Americans the heirs of the revolutionaries, of Cromwell and of William III, the inheritors of a true British liberty, that had somehow got lost in its own motherland.

That great dust-heap called 'history'.

That public virtue which among the ancients was denominated patriotism, is derived from a strong sense of our own interest in the preservation and prosperity of the free government of which we are members. Such a sentiment, which had rendered the legions of the republic almost invincible, could make but a very feeble impression on the mercenary servants of a despotic prince; and it became necessary to supply that defect by other motives, of a different, but not less forcible nature; honour and religion.

The 1st Amendment protects the right to speak, not the right to spend.

That's what hell must be like, small chat to the babbling of Lethe about the good old days when we wished we were dead.

The academic mind can eat away the very basis of its own assurance ... produce contortions when it tries to bend over backward ... allow itself to be dismayed by the picture it has created of relentless historical process.

The active cavalry of Scythia is always followed, in their most distant and rapid incursions, by an adequate number of spare horses, who may be occasionally used, either to redouble the speed, or to satisfy the hunger, of the barbarians. Many are the resources of courage and poverty.

The aim of the historian, like that of the artist, is to enlarge our picture of the world, to give us a new way of looking at things.