Quotes About History

Doris Kearns Goodwin

Do leaders shape the times or do the times summon their leaders?

War is mainly a catalogue of blunders," Churchill observed in his memoirs, "but it may be doubted whether any mistake in history has equaled that of which Stalin and the Communist Chiefs were guilty when they . . . supinely awaited or were incapable of realizing, the fearful onslaught which impended upon Russia.

Through the last days of May and the early days of June, Eleanor

My library has been the greatest possible pleasure to me," he wrote to his parents during his freshman year, "as whenever I have any spare time I can immediately take up a book. Aunt Annie's present, the 'History of the Civil War,' is extremely interesting." From early childhood, he had regarded books as "the greatest of companions." And once encountered, they were never forgotten

That very afternoon, Taft fell seriously ill with what doctors mistakenly diagnosed as dengue fever. He remained bedridden for ten days, and when he returned to work, severe rectal pain prevented him from sitting. At the same time, a fungal infection developed in his groin.

every man to read the history of his country, "to appreciate the value of our free institutions," to treasure literature and the scriptures

Novels give you the matrix of emotions, give you the flavour of a time in a way formal history cannot.

Often the mass emotions are those which seem the noblest, best and most beautiful. And yet, inside a year, five years, a decade, five decades, people will be asking, How could you have believed that? because events will have taken place that will have banished the said mass emotions to the dustbin of history.

Women often get dropped from memory, and then history.

Women are the cowards they are because they have been semi-slaves for so long.

For many thousands of years people had looked at expensive heads of hair and thought of how much food and warmth they represented, so obviously it was a thought of no use at all, so why bother to have it? But thoughts of this sort did go ticking on, useless or not.

Yes, it's because it's one thing to think poor things and another to allow that African politics could have any resemblance at all to English politics—even such a long time ago.

The tale must be rehearsed–and we may amuse ourselves imagining how these must have been, often, acrimonious, or at least in dispute. Whose version of events is going to be committed to memory by the Memories?

We hope that your period of immersion in group lunacy, group self-righteousness, will not coincide with some period of your country's history when you can put your murderous and stupid ideas into practice. "If you are lucky, you will emerge much enlarged by your experience of what you are capable of in the way of bigotry and intolerance. You will understand absolutely how sane people, in periods of public insanity, can murder, destroy, lie, swear black is white.

We Chroniclers do well to be afraid when we approach those parts of our histories (our natures) that deal with evil, the depraved, the benighted. Describing, we become. We even - and I've see it and have shuddered - summon. The most innocent of poets can write of ugliness and forces he has done no more than speculate about - and bring them into his life. I tell you, I've seen it, watched it...

Literature and history, these two great branches of human learning, records of human behvaiour, human thought, are less and less valued by the young, and by educators, too. Yet from them one may learn how to be a citizen and a human being. We may learn how to look at ourselves and at the society we live in, in that calm, cool, critical and sceptical way which is the only possible stance for a civilized human being, or so have said all the philosophers and the sages.

My lot were shocked and disturbed, for we thought, if you are not 'politically conscious', then you get what you deserve – Hitler, at least. That some of the most politically conscious generations in history had got Stalin was not a thought we could yet accommodate.

our society was dominated by things, artefacts, possessions, machines, objects, and that we judged previous societies by artefacts—things. There was no way of knowing an ancient society's ideas except through the barrier of our own.

What is history? A record of misery, brutality and stupidity. That'a all. That's all it ever will be.

After all, this situation, a similar one, is bound to roll around again, in a different context, a different history. Everything does. And the next time, will we (humankind) recognise it and do better?

Novels give you the matrix of emotions, give you the flavor of a time in a way formal history cannot.

This may be animal behaviour, I don't know, but it is certainly human behaviour, when humans allow themselves to revert to barbarism, and has been for thousands, probably even millions of years -- depending on where one decides to put the beginning of our history as humans, not animals.

Somewhere about middle age, it occurs to most people that a century is only their lifetime twice. On that thought, all of history rushes together, and now they live inside the story of time, instead of looking at it from outside as observers. Only ten or twelve of their lifetimes ago, Shakespeare was alive. The French Revolution was just the other day.