Best 5189 quotes in «history quotes» category

The impartiality of history is not that of the mirror, which merely reflects objects, but of the judge, who sees, listens, and decides.

The important thing is not what they think of me, but what I think of them.

The incapacity of a weak and distracted government may often assume the appearance and produce the effects of a treasonable correspondence with the public enemy. If Alaric himself had been introduced into the council of Ravenna, he would probably have advised the same measures which were actually pursued by the ministers of Honorius.

The irony about Charles II is not that he came to the throne because England needed a successor to Charles I, but because England needed a successor to Oliver Cromwell.

The Japanese Co-Prosperity Zone began as a racist utopia and ended as a cross between an abbatoir, a plantation and a brothel.

The Japanese couldn't have been all bad during World War II. Look at all the movies Hollywood was able to make on account of them. The Indians weren't the only bad guys. Thanks to the Japanese and Geronimo, John Wayne became a millionaire.

The judicial system is the most expensive machine ever invented for finding out what happened and what to do about it.

The knowledge that is suited to our situation and powers, the whole compass of moral, natural, and mathematical science, was neglected by the new Platonists; whilst they exhausted their strength in the verbal disputes of metaphysics, attempted to explore the secrets of the invisible world, and studied to reconcile Aristotle with Plato, on subjects of which both these philosophers were as ignorant as the rest of mankind.

The last function of reason is to recognize that there are an infinity of things which surpass it.

The law of unintended consequences is the only real law of history.

The long historian of my country's woes.

"The [London] Times" has published no rumours; it's only reported facts, namely that other, less responsible papers are publishing certain rumours.

The love of liberty was the ruling passion of these Germans; the enjoyment of it, their best treasure; the word that expressed that enjoyment the most pleasing to their ear. They deserved, they assumed, they maintained the honourable epithet of Franks or Freemen; which concealed, though it did not extinguish, the peculiar names of the several states of the confederacy.

The lovers of romance can go elsewhere for satisfaction but where can the lovers of truth turn if not to history?

The main thing is to make history, not to write it.

The man for whom history is bunk is almost invariably as obtuse to the future as he is blind to the past.

The man who sees both sides of a question is a man who sees absolutely nothing at all.

The manly pride of the Romans, content with substantial power, had left to the vanity of the East the forms and ceremonies of ostentatious greatness. But when they lost even the semblance of those virtues which were derived from their ancient freedom, the simplicity of Roman manners was insensibly corrupted by the stately affectation of the courts of Asia.

The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and about all time.

The male clerk with his quill pen and copper-plate handwriting had gone for good. The female short-hand typist took his place. It was a decisive moment in women's emancipation.

The midwife of history is violence.

The Middle Ages were an era of mysticism, ruled by blind faith and blind obedience to the dogma that faith is superior to reason. The Renaissance was specifically the rebirth of reason, the liberation of man's mind, the triumph of rationality over mysticism - a faltering, incomplete, but impassioned triumph that led to the birth of science, of individualism, of freedom.

The men who make history have not time to write it.

The middle sort of historians (of which the most part are) spoil all; they will chew our meat for us.

The miracle drugs (neuroleptics) cause the worst plague of brain damage in medical history.

The moralist must praise heroism and condemn cruelty; but the moralist does not explain events.

The monster has escaped Elba!" "The tyrant has landed at Cannes!" "Bonaparte meets the troops." "Napoleon approaches Paris." "His Imperial Majesty has entered the capital.

The morality of art is in its very beauty.

The more abstract the truth you wish to teach, the more must you allure the senses to it.

The more bombers the less room for doves of peace.

The more I study the things of the mind the more mathematical I find them. In them as in mathematics it is a question of quantities; they must be treated with precision. I have never had more satisfaction than in proving this in the realms of art, politics and history.

The more recently power has originated, the less it can remain stationary - first because those who created it have become accustomed to rapid further movement and because they are and will be innovators per se; secondly, because the forces aroused or subdued by them can be employed only through further acts.

The most stirring battle-poem in English is about a brigade of cavalry which charged in the wrong direction.

The most common characteristic of women's history is to be lost and discovered, lost again and rediscovered, lost once more and re-rediscovered - a process of tragic waste and terrible silences that will continue until women's stories are a full and equal part of the human story.

The most terrible job in warfare is to be a second lieutenant leading a platoon when you are on the battlefield.

The most distinguished merit of those two officers was their respective prowess, of the one in the combats of Bacchus, of the other in those of Venus.

The most shocking fact about war is that its victims and its instruments are individual human beings, and that these individual beings are condemned by the monstrous conventions of politics to murder or be murdered in quarrels not their own.

The Nazis believed in a master race. The militant Islamists believe in a master faith.

The nation behaves well if it treats the natural resources as assets which it must turn over to the next generation increased; and not impaired in value.

The Nazi Party was, in the early 1920s, but one among many nationalist and volkisch radical political groups. It was catapulted to prominence with the onset of economic recession in the late 1920s... The Nazis owed their spectacular to a combination of two discrete sets of factors: first, their distinctive organisation and strategy; and secondly, the wider socio-economic conditions which created climates of opinion and sets of grievances on which the Nazis could prey.

The older I get the more I'm convinced that it's the purpose of politicians and journalists to say the world is very simple, whereas it's the purpose of historians to say, 'No! It's very complicated.' The job of the historian is to help give people a sense of existence in time, without which we are really not fully human.

The object of studying philosophy is to know one's own mind, not other peoples.

The obscurest epoch is to-day.

The obvious is always least understood.

The one thing I do not want to be called is First Lady. It sounds like a saddle horse.

The only form of fiction in which real characters do not seem out of place is history. In novels they are detestable.

The only justification for repressive institutions is material and cultural deficit. But such institutions, at certain stages of history, perpetuate and produce such a deficit, and even threaten human survival.

The only important thing to realise about history is that it all took place in the last five minutes.

The only good histories are those written by those who had command in the events they describe.

The passion for tidiness is the historian's occupational disease.