Best 5189 quotes in «history quotes» category

I wouldn't attach too much importance to these student riots. I remember when I was a student at the Sorbonne in Paris, I used to go out and riot occasionally.

I would rather be assassinated than see a single star removed from the American flag.

James Joyce is right about history being a nightmare-- but it may be that nightmare from which no one can awaken. People are trapped in history and history in trapped in them.

Jews show so near an affinity to you... Where is your Christianity if you do not believe in their Judaism?

Journalism is merely history's first draft.

Julian sincerely abhorred the system of oriental despotism which Diocletian, Constantine, and the patient habits of four score years, had established in the empire. A motive of superstition prevented the execution of the design which Julian had frequently meditated, of relieving his head from the weight of a costly diadem; but he absolutely refused the title of Dominus or Lord, a word which was grown so familiar to the ears of the Romans, that they no longer remembered its servile and humiliating origin.

Just as modern mass production requires the standardization of commodities, so the social process requires standardization of man, and this standardization is called equality.

Keeping books on social aid is capitalistic nonsense. I just use the money for the poor. I can't stop to count it.

Kinship among nations is not determined in such measurements as proximity of size and age. Rather we should turn to those inner things - call them what you will - I mean those intangibles that are the real treasures free men possess.

Knowledge Qf history frees us to be contemporary.

Language is the archives of history.

Language is our body and our breath, our world and our thought, our perception and even out unconscious.

Language is an archaeological vehicle... the language we speak is a whole palimpsest of human effort and history.

Let valour end my life!

Let a man in a garret but burn with enough intensity and he will set fire to the world.

[L]et me point out that libertarians defend a tradition of liberty that is the fruit of thousands of years of human history.

Let none presume to measure the irregularities of Michael Angelo or Socrates by village scales.

Leadership is the other side of the coin of loneliness, and he who is a leader must always act alone. And acting alone, accept everything alone.

Less is more, in prose as in architecture.

Let us remember that the times which future generations delight to recall are not those of ease and prosperity, but those of adversity bravely borne.

Libraries are not made, they grow.

Life is a loom, weaving illusion.

Let us resolve to be masters, not the victims, of our history, controlling our own destiny without giving way to blind suspicions and emotions.

Life is not simple, and therefore history, which is past life, is not simple.

Life isn't meant to be easy. It's hard to take being on the top - or on the bottom. I guess I'm something of a fatalist. You have to have a sense of history, I think, to survive some of these things... Life is one crisis after another.

Life is nothing until it is lived; but it is yours to make sense of, and the of it is nothing other than the sense you choose.

Look through the whole history of countries professing the Romish religion, and you will uniformly find the leaven of this besetting and accursed principle of action - that the end will sanction any means.

Literature is the expression of a feeling of deprivation, a recourse against a sense of something missing. But the contrary is also true: language is what makes us human. It is a recourse against the meaningless noise and silence of nature and history.

Like most Rebel soldiers, Sam Watkins owned no slaves.

Lincoln would be just like me. He wouldn't know what the hell to do.

Literature overtakes history, for literature gives you more than one life. It expands experience and opens new opportunities to readers.

Man generally is entangled in insoluble problems; history is consequently a tragedy in which we are all involved, whose keynote is anxiety and frustration, not progress and fulfilment.

Mad, is he? Then I hope that he will bite some of my other generals!

Man is not logical and his intellectual history is a record of mental reserves and compromises. He hangs on to what he can in his old beliefs even when he is compelled to surrender their logical basis.

Mankind are so much the same, in all times and places, that history informs us of nothing new or strange in this particular. Its chief use is only to discover the constant and universal principles of human nature.

Man, of all the animals, is probably the only one to regard himself as a great delicacy.

Many scholars have complained of our tendency to see history only in conflicts, but I am not convinced they are right. It is in conflict that our values are exposed.

Materially we must strive to secure a broader economic opportunity for all men, so that each shall have a better chance to show the stuff of which he is made.

Men like M. de Talleyrand are like sharp instruments with which it is dangerous to play.

Memmius would only be useless to him for a short time, but that he would remain useless to himself and the Republic forever.

Memoirs are the backstairs of history.

Men are very apt to run into extremes, hatred to England may carry come into an excess of Confidence in France... I am heartily disposed to entertain the most favourable sentiments of our new ally and to cherish them in others to a reasonable degree; but it is a maxim founded on the universal experience of mankind, that no nation is to be trusted farther than it is bound by its interest; and no prudent statesman or politician will venture to depart from it.

Modern dynamical systems theory has a relatively short history. It begins with Poincare (of course)... [to whom] a global understanding of the gross behavior of all solutions of the system was more important than the local behavior of particular, analytically-precise solutions.

Mona Lisa is the only beauty who went through history and retained her reputation.

Mom and Dad say I should make my life an example of the principles I believe in... But every time I do, they tell me to stop it.

More Irishmen died fighting for Britain in World War I than died fighting against her in all of Ireland's bids for independence combined.

More and more, I tend to read history. I often find it more up to date than the daily newspapers.

More history is made by secret handshakes than by battles, bills and proclamations.

Most events recorded in history are more remarkable than important, like eclipses of the sun and moon, by which all are attracted,but whose effects no one takes the trouble to calculate.

Most higher education is devoted to affirming the traditions and origins of an existing elite and transmitting them to new members.