Best 5189 quotes in «history quotes» category

One of the many dreadful aspects of the Kennedy 'legacy' is the now-unbreakable grip of celebrity politics, image-doctoring, stage management, and "torch-passing" rhetoric in general.

One of the rules of history is that people do not write about what is too obvious to mention. And so the information, having never been recorded, is now lost for ever.

One of the things that has to be faced is the process of waiting to change the system, how much we have got to do to find out who we are, where we have come from and where we are going.

One of the ways of helping to destroy a people is to tell them they don't have a history that they have no roots.

One science only will one genius fit; so vast is art, so narrow human wit.

One sought not absolute truth. One sought only a spool on which to wind the thread of history without breaking it.

One who comes to the Court must come to adore, not to protest. That's the new gloss on the First Amendment.

Only a good-for-nothing is not interested in his past.

Only if we understand, can we care. Only if we care, we will help. Only if we help, we shall be saved.

Only strong personalities can endure history, the weak are extinguished by it.

Only those are fit to live who do not fear to die and none are fit to die who have shrunk from the joy of life and the duty of life.

On the slightest touch the unsupported fabric of their pride and power fell to the ground. The expiring senate displayed a sudden lustre, blazed for a moment, and was extinguished for ever.

On their side more men are standing, on ours more will fight!

Open markets offer the only realistic hope of pulling billions of people in developing countries out of abject poverty, while sustaining prosperity in the industrialized world.

Our best history is still poetry.

Our armies were in as much chaos in victory as theirs in defeat.

Our bells are worn threadbare with ringing for victories

Our ignorance of history causes us to slander our own times.

Our minds thus grow in spots; and like grease-spots, the spots spread. But we let them spread as little as possible: we keep unaltered as much of our old knowledge, as many of our old prejudices and beliefs, as we can. We patch and tinker more than we renew. The novelty soaks in; it stains the ancient mass; but it is also tinged by what absorbs it.

Our historic imagination is at best slightly developed. We generalise and idealise the past egregiously. We set up little toys to stand as symbols for centuries and the complicated lives of countless individuals.

Our men must win or die. Pompey's men have... other options.

Ours is a government of liberty by, through, and under the law. A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be great or a democracy.

Peace is more precious than a piece of land.

Peace - the word evokes the simplest and most cherished dream of humanity. Peace is, and has always been, the ultimate human aspiration. And yet our history overwhelmingly shows that while we speak incessantly of peace, our actions tell a very different story.

Our union rests upon public opinion, and can never be cemented by the blood of its citizens shed in civil war.

People always seemed to know half of history, and to get it confused with the other half.

People think too historically. They are always living half in a cemetery.

People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.

People tend to forget that the word "history" contains the word "story".

Personally, I would be delighted if there were a life after death, especially if it permitted me to continue to learn about this world and others, if it gave me a chance to discover how history turns out.

Peter Jones's is a vital public service. He reminds us that while we shouldn't live in the past, we are wiser and stronger when we live with it.

Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.

Philosophy, with the aid of experience, has at length banished the study of alchymy; and the present age, however desirous of riches, is content to seek them by the humbler means of commerce and industry.

Philosophy had instructed Julian to compare the advantages of action and retirement; but the elevation of his birth and the accidents of his life never allowed him the freedom of choice. He might perhaps sincerely have preferred the groves of the Academy and the society of Athens; but he was constrained, at first by the will, and afterwards by the injustice of Constantius, to expose his person and fame to the dangers of Imperial greatness; and to make himself accountable to the world and to posterity for the happiness of millions.

Philosophy alone can boast (and perhaps it is no more than the boast of philosophy), that her gentle hand is able to eradicate from the human mind the latent and deadly principle of fanaticism.

Philosophy which asserts that human experience repeats itself is ineffectual.

Poetry is devil's wine.

Pierre Curie, a brilliant scientist, happened to marry a still more brilliant one-Marie, the famous Madame Curie-and is the only great scientist in history who is consistently identified as the husband of someone else.

Please go on, make your threats. I don't like to submit to mere implication.

Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.

Poetry must be as new as foam and as old as the rock.

Political and social history are in my view two aspects of the same process. Social life loses half its interest and political movements lose most of their meaning if they are considered separately.

Politics are vulgar when they are not liberalised by history, and history fades into mere literature when it loses sight of its relation to practical politics.

Poetry is not the proper antithesis to prose, but to science. Poetry is opposed to science, and prose to meter. The proper and immediate object of science is the acquirement, or communication of truth; the proper and immediate object of poetry is the communication of immediate pleasure.

Politics at all times lead to bloody wars, and not only politics, but also religions as well as social and economic systems of alltimes are spattered with blood. Invariably the big ones devoured the little ones, and the little ones the tiny ones.

Politics can be relatively fair in the breathing spaces of history; at its critical turning points there is no other rule possible than the old one, that the end justifies the means.

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

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.

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

Presume not that I am the thing I was.