Best 5189 quotes in «history quotes» category

There are always some areas world history does not reach, zones of silence and undisturbed ignorance.

There are no words that can tell the hidden spirit of the wilderness, that can reveal its mystery, its melancholy and its charm.

There are secret articles in our treaties with the gods, of more importance than all the rest, which the historian can never know.

There are some places where history just grabs you by the jugular. This is one of them.

There exists in human nature a strong propensity to depreciate the advantages, and to magnify the evils, of the present times.

... there has never been a period in history when there have been necessary killings which has not been instantly followed by a period when there have been unnecessary killings.

The reign of imagagology begins where history ends.

The Reichswirtschaftsministerium ('Reich Ministry of Economic Affairs') tells the shop managers what and how to produce, at what prices and from whom to buy, at what prices and to whom to sell. It assigns every worker to his job and fixes his wages. It decrees to whom and on what terms the capitalists must entrust their funds. Market exchange is merely a sham.

There is a delight in the hardy life of the open.

There is an awful lot of difference between reading something and actually seeing it, for you can never tell, till you see it, just how big a liar History is.

There is no history of mankind, there is only an indefinite number of histories of all kinds of aspects of human life.

There is little doubt that, until 1846 when he helped to engineer the resignation of Robert Peel, Disraeli was driven by an ambition to make his mark rather than by any consistent political purpose, and that his attacks on Peel would have not have been so mounted had he been given in 1841 the office for which he had asked.

There is no easy way from the earth to the stars.

There is no history worthy attention save that of free nations; the history of nations under the sway of despotism is no more than a collection of anecdotes.

There is no nonsense so gross that society will not, at some time, make a doctrine of it and defend it with every weapon of communal stupidity.

There is not any memory with less satisfaction than the memory of some temptation we resisted.

There is no way to success in art but to take off your coat, grind paint, and work like a digger on the railroad, all day and every day.

There is nothing more difficult for a truly creative painter than to paint a rose, because before he can do so he has first to forget all the roses that were ever painted.

There is romance, the genuine glinting stuff, in typewriters, and not merely in their development from clumsy giants into agile dwarfs, but in the history of their manufacture, which is filled with raids, battles, lonely pioneers, great gambles, hope, fear, despair, triumph. If some of our novels could be written by the typewriters instead of on them, how much better they would be.

There is only one way of victory over the bitterness and rage that comes naturally to us--To will what God wills brings peace.

There is properly no history, only biography.

There is on the globe one single spot, the possessor of which is our natural and habitual enemy. It is New Orleans, through which the produce of three-eighths of our territory must pass to market, and from its fertility it will ere long yield more than half of our whole produce and contain more than half our inhabitants.

The retirement of Athanasius, which ended only with the life of Constantius, was spent, for the most part, in the society of the monks, who faithfully served him as guards, as secretaries, and as messengers; but the importance of maintaining a more intimate connection with the catholic party tempted him, whenever the diligence of the pursuit was abated, to emerge from the desert, to introduce himself into Alexandria, and to trust his person to the discretion of his friends and adherents.

The repeated claim before the 'seizure of power' - that the NSDAP, as a national social-revolutionary movement, and not simply another political party... would create new bonds of unity through its elimination and transcending of the party system, was highly attractive and conveyed much of Nazism's dynamic appeal.

There's no one as transparent as the person who thinks he's devilish deep.

There's nothing anyone can do except change the subject.

The reverence for the Scriptures is an element of civilization, for thus has the history of the world been preserved, and is preserved.

The revolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe. You have to make it fall.

There was no more dangerous a time in a nation's life than the passing of a ruler when the succession was in doubt.

... there was the first Balkan war and the second Balkan war and then there was the first world war. It is extraordinary how having done a thing once you have to do it again, there is the pleasure of coincidence and there is the pleasure of repetition, and so there is the second world war, and in between there was the Abyssinian war and the Spanish civil war.

There never was a time in our history when ignorance of current affairs could be so dangerous.

The researcher is more memorable than the researched.

There was not one cause for our internment, but many - a deep-seated racial prejudice working on top of fear, distrust, and greed. So how is one to say exactly where history begins or ends? It is all slow oscillations, curves, and waves which take so long to reveal themselves ... like watching a tree grow.

The right of every person "to be let alone" must be placed in the scales with the right of others to communicate.

The SA is, and remains, Germany's destiny.

The same political parties which now agitiate the US have existed through all time. And in fact the terms of whig and tory belong to natural as well as to civil history. They denote the temper and constitution and mind of different individuals.

The Romans, who so coolly and so concisely mention the acts of justice which were exercised by the legions, reserve their compassion and their eloquence for their own sufferings, when the provinces were invaded and desolated by the arms of the successful Barbarians.

These idle disputants overlooked the invariable laws of nature, which have connected peace with innocence, plenty with industry, and safety with valour.

The simple circumstantial narrative (did such a narrative exist) of the ruin of a single town, of the misfortunes of a single family, might exhibit an interesting and instructive picture of human manners; but the tedious repetition of vague and declamatory complaints would fatigue the attention of the most patient reader.

The significance of Columbus's discovery was that on a round earth, humanity is more interconnected than on a flat one. On a round earth, the two most distant points are closer together than they are on a flat earth.

The study of history, it seems to me, leads to the conviction that all important events tend toward the same end - the civilization of mankind.

The South creates the civilizations, the North conquers them, ruins them, borrows from them, spreads them: this is one summary of history.

The success of many books is due to the affinity between the mediocrity of the author's ideas and those of the public.

The subject, however various and important, has already been so frequently, so ably, and so successfully discussed, that it is now grown familiar to the reader, and difficult to the writer.

The six thousand years of human history form but a portion of the geologic day that is passing over us: they do not extend into the yesterday of the globe, far less touch the myriads of ages spread out beyond.

"The sounds of people drowning are something that I can not describe to you, and neither can anyone else. It's the most dreadful sound and there is a terrible silence that follows it.

The Spartan, smiting and spurning the wretched Helot, moves our disgust. But the same Spartan, calmly dressing his hair, and uttering his concise jests, on what the well knows to be his last day, in the pass of Thermopylae, is not to be contemplated without admiration.

The story of the African-American people is the story of the settlement and growth of America itself, a universal tale that all people should experience.

The struggle of today is not altogether for today - it is for a vast future also.

The student is to read history actively and not passively; to esteem his own life the text, and books the commentary. Thus compelled, the muse of history will utter oracles as never to those who do not respect themselves.