Best 5189 quotes in «history quotes» category

The wise only possess ideas; the greater part of mankind are possessed by them.

The wisdom of hindsight, so useful to historians and indeed to authors of memoirs, is sadly denied to practicing politicians.

The word 'Italy' is a geographical expression, a description which is useful shorthand, but has none of the political significance the efforts of the revolutionary ideologues try to put on it, and which is full of dangers for the very existence of the states which make up the peninsula.

The work of art may have a moral effect, but to demand moral purpose from the artist is to make him ruin his work.

The world's battlefields have been in the heart chiefly; more heroism has been displayed in the household and the closet, than on the most memorable battlefields in history.

The writer may very well serve a movement of history as its mouthpiece, but he cannot of course create it.

The writing of histories - as Goethe once noted - is one way of getting rid of the weight of the past.... The writing of history liberates us from history.

The writing of history reflects the interests, predilections, and even prejudices of a given generation.

The world of sight is still limitless. It is the artist who limits vision to the cramped dimensions of his own ego.

They fought on with a devotion which would puzzle the generation of the 1980s. More surprising, in many instances it would have baffled the men they themselves were before Pearl Harbor. Among MacArthur's ardent infantrymen were cooks, mechanics, pilots whose planes had been shot down, seamen whose ships had been sunk, and some civilian volunteers.

They [the mathematicians of the Enlightenment] defined their terms vaguely and used their methods loosely, and the logic of their arguments was made to fit the dictates of their intuition. In short, they broke all the laws of rigor and of mathematical decorum. The veritable orgy which followed the introduction of the infinitesimals... was but a natural reaction. Intuition had too long been held imprisoned by the severe rigor of the Greeks. Now it broke loose, and there were no Euclids to keep its romantic flight in check.

Things have never been more like the way they are today in history.

They were afraid, never having learned what I taught myself: Defeat the fear of death and welcome the death of fear.

Thirty resolute men in your House of Commons could save the world.

They died hard, those savage men - like wounded wolves at bay. They were filthy, and they were lousy, and they stunk. And I loved them.

They can shout down the head of the physics department at Cal Tech.

This I hold to be the chief office of history, to rescue virtuous actions from the oblivion to which a want of records would consign them, and that men should feel a dread of being considered infamous in the opinions of posterity, from their depraved expressions and base actions.

This I regard as history's highest function, to let no worthy action be uncommemorated, and to hold out the reprobation of posterity as a terror to evil words and deeds.

This is an hour of history that troubles our minds and hurts our hearts.

This is a huge step toward unraveling Genesis Chapter 1, Verse 1-what happened in the beginning. This is a Genesis machine. It'll help to recreate the most glorious event in the history of the universe.

This is a very fickle and faithless generation.

This is the greatest week in the history of the world since the Creation, because as a result of what happened in this week, the world is bigger, infinitely.

This was the Athenians' war against the King of Macedon, a war of words. Words are the only weapons the Athenians have left.

This is my history; like all other histories, a narrative of misery.

Those, who are strongly wedded to what I shall call 'the classical theory', will fluctuate, I expect, between a belief that I am quite wrong and a belief that I am saying nothing new. It is for others to determine if either of these or the third alternative is right.

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it without a sense of ironic futility.

Those who don't remember the past are condemned to repeat the eleventh grade.

Those who did not live during the years close to 1789 do not know the pleasure of living.

This agglomeration which was called and which still calls itself the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire.

This variety of objects will suspend, for some time, the course of the narrative; but the interruption will be censured only by those readers who are insensible to the importance of laws and manners, while they peruse, with eager curiosity, the transient intrigues of a court, or the accidental event of a battle.

This war, disguise it as they may, is virtually nothing more or less than perpetual slavery against universal freedoms.

Those who weep for the happy periods which they encounter in history acknowledge what they want; not the alleviation but the silencing of misery.

Though I never ordered it, and never wished for it, I have never shed any tears over the event, because I believe that it hastened what we all fought for, the end of the war.

Though anti-Semitism had been only one of several sources of Nazi voting strength, after 1933 Hitler placed anti-Semitic ideologues, the most important of whom were Joseph Goebbels, Otto Dietrich and Alfred Rosenberg, at the top of the key opinion-shaping institutions. In a dictatorship resting on the 'leadership principle', Hitler's anti-Semitic convictions defined policy.

Through searching out origins, one becomes a crab. The historian looks backwards, and finally he also believes backwards.

Through the centuries, the history of peoples is but a lesson in mutual tolerance.

Time in its irresistible and ceaseless flow carries along on its flood all created things and drowns them in the depths of obscurity. . . . But the tale of history forms a very strong bulwark against the stream of time, and checks in some measure its irresistible flow, so that, of all things done in it, as many as history has taken over it secures and binds together, and does not allow them to slip away into the abyss of oblivion.

Throughout human history, the apostles of purity, those who have claimed to possess a total explanation, have wrought havoc among mere mixed-up human beings.

To all those who have suffered as a consequence of our troubled past I extend my sincere thoughts and deep sympathy. With the benefit of historical hindsight we can all see things which we would wish had been done differently or not at all.

To converse with historians is to keep good company; many of them were excellent men, and those who were not, have taken care to appear such in their writings.

Those Victorians: endlessly fascinating, broad in their learning, heroic in their achievements, in parts completely mad.

Today it is fashionable to talk about the poor. Unfortunately, it is not fashionable to talk with them.

To die for the revolution is a one-shot deal; to live for the revolution means taking on the more difficult commitment of changing our day-to-day life patterns.

To develop and perfect and arm conscience is the great achievement of history.

To knock a thing down, especially if it is cocked at an arrogant angle, is a deep delight of the blood.

To know the truth of history is to realize its ultimate myth and its inevitable ambiguity.

To live is like to love - all reason is against it, and all healthy instinct for it.

To live without history is to live like an infant, constantly amazed and challenged by a strange and unnamed world.

Tomorrow, the Tripartite Pact will become an instrument of just peace between the peoples. Italians! Once more arise and be worthy of this historical hour! We shall win.

Too many historical writers are the votaries of cults, which, by definition are dedicated to whitewashing warts and hanging halos.