Best 5189 quotes in «history quotes» category

Posterity allows to every man his true value and proper honours.

Postmodernism entices us with the siren call of liberation and creativity, but it may be an invitation to intellectual and moral suicide.

Posterity! You will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom! I hope you will make a good use of it.

Preserve your history and become everlasting; receive new life from the times that have gone by.

Presume not that I am the thing I was.

Primitive times are lyrical, ancient times epical, modern times dramatic. The ode sings of eternity, the epic imparts solemnity tohistory, the drama depicts life. The characteristic of the first poetry is ingeniousness, of the second, simplicity, of the third, truth.

Problems cannot all be solved, for, as they are solved, new aspects are continually revealed: the historian opens the way, he does not close it.

Progress needs the brakeman, but the brakeman should not spend all his time putting on the brakes.

Psychology keeps trying to vindicate human nature. History keeps undermining the effort.

Purely historical thought is therefore nihilistic: it wholeheartedly accepts the evil of history and in this way is opposed to rebellion.

Quite apart from any conscious program, the great cultural historians have always been historical morphologists: seekers after theforms of life, thought, custom, knowledge, art.

Quit thinking about what Bobby Lee's gonna do to us and start thinking about what we're going to do to him.

Racism is an ism to which everyone in the world today is exposed; for or against, we must take sides. And the history of the future will differ according to the decision which we make.

Radical historians now the tell the story of Thanksgiving from the point of view of the turkey.

Rapid change of conditions in all human affairs bring unexpected results.

Reality is a staircase going neither up nor down, we don't move; today is today, always is today.

Rather an end in horror, than horror without end. He could not condemn principles he might need to invoke and apply later. The wolf cannot help having been created by God as he is, but we shoot him all the same if we have to. The great player in diplomacy, as in chess, asks the question,Does this improve me?, not look at the possible fringe benefits If you can't have what you like, you must like what you have.

Regarding History as the slaughter-bench at which the happiness of peoples, the wisdom of States, and the virtue of individuals have been victimized--the question involuntarily arises--to what principle, to what final aim these enormous sacrifices have been offered.

Remember, God provides the best camouflage several hours out of every 24.

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

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

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

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

Sanity is madness put to good use.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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 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.]

Skepticism is history's bedfellow.

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.

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

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 creatures are made to see in the dark.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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