Best 5189 quotes in «history quotes» category

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

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 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.

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. [Ger., Das Uebel macht eine Geschichte und das Gute keine.]

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.

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.

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.

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.

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, (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.

Some creatures are made to see in the dark.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

That great dust-heap called 'history'.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

The ancient Romans built their greatest masterpieces of architecture, their amphitheaters, for wild beasts to fight in.

The artist's job is to be a witness to his time in history.

The artists must be sacrificed to their art. Like the bees, they must put their lives into the sting they give.

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.

The art of creation is older than the art of killing.

The amazing thing since so many variables enter into historical judgments, is not that historians disagree but that they agree as often as they do.

The Battle of Koom Valley is the only one known to history where both sides ambushed each other.

The becoming of man is the history of the exhaustion of his possibilities.

The best benefit we derive from history is the enthusiasm it excites.

The barbarians of Germany had felt, and still dreaded, the arms of the young Caesar; his soldiers were the companions of his victory; the grateful provincials enjoyed the blessings of his reign; but the favourites, who had opposed his elevation, were offended by his virtues; and they justly considered the friend of the people as the enemy of the court.

The authors of all our misfortune.

The best history is but like the art of Rembrandt; it casts a vivid light on certain selected causes, on those which were best and greatest; it leaves all the rest in shadow and unseen.

The best political weapon is the weapon of terror. Cruelty commands respect. Men may hate us. But, we don't ask for their love; only for their fear.