Quotes About History

The concept of a person is that of a character abstracted from a history.

Tarih ne bir hapishane ne bir müze ve ne de kendi kendini kutlama vesilesi olacak bir malzemeler kümesidir." s.8

Centralia, a mining town in Pennsylvania made uninhabitable by an underground fire that began in 1962 and is still burning today (the road into town bears the graffiti legend "Welcome to Hell");

At King Henry's Mound there is a perfect, uninterrupted view – created in 1710 – through a gap in the trees and all the way across the city to St Paul's Cathedral. It is a view that is protected by law. Protecting magnificent views is proof that the law is not, always, an ass.

Moreover, one must show, in the historical period of interest, that these heuristics and preferences are consistent across a significant portion of decision makers socialized in this strategic culture before drawing any conclusions about

History is what we write, not what we remember. Why should we tarnish the memory of our planet by enshrining our less then noble deeds?

It was often difficult to tell if things were a hundred years old, or a hundred thousand.

We're all Poseidon's children, Geoffrey: whether we like it or not." "Poseidon's children," he repeated. "Is that supposed to mean something?" "We came through. That's all. We weathered the absolute worst that history could throw at us, and we thrived. Now it's time to start doing something useful with our lives.

This is a kindness, a thing done to another human being for no reason other than compassion. A private, dignified act of basic human decency, which history, being the bastard that it is, will probably neglect to commemorate. You

I don't think the Rattlers are coming back," I said, remembering the bar in the Hall of History. The Rattlers had come and gone during the Fourth Occupation, about nine million years ago, and nothing had been heard of them since.

It took time for light to reach the Eye from distant galaxies. The further out the Eye looked, the further it looked back into the history of the universe. Galaxies ten million light years away were glimpsed as they were ten million years earlier; those a billion light years away offered a window into the universe when it was a billion years younger than the present epoch.

Memory is the personal journalism of the soul.

I have such a personal life history with R&B - it's the first music I remember hearing, and it feels like a family tradition.

We all have very personal relationships to what happened on 9/11 and the events after tracking Osama bin Laden. Nobody can escape from the influence of that.

White people are so fragile, God bless 'em. 'Well, I didn't own slaves.' No you didn't. Nobody is asking you to take personal responsibility for this. But you're a beneficiary of a system that did. Just own that and move on.

Martin Luther would be the headliner of any 'dead-or-alive dinner party' I would ever throw. He is, quite simply, one of the most fascinating brains and compelling personalities in history.

Long a student and admirer of the American West, its history, its art, its culture, its cast of personalities, I'm aware that in the West a great confluence of events and people combined to create something unique in the annals of human history.

An awareness of our past is essential to the establishment of our personality and our identity as Africans.

Me personally, I want to entertain people above all. When you look back at burlesque in history and the real golden age of burlesque, those entertainers were there to entertain, and there wasn't usually some big political message behind what they were doing.

Robert Johnson? No, I didn't know him, personally.

I only know from my own personal experience, and I personally feel that there's a cyclical nature to things, so you don't want to start making generalizations about how bad things have become in comparison to the old days.

I think the best comedies came out during the Depression. Personally.

Being a parent gives you historical perspective. You have thoughts about how you fit into a larger generational drama - those who came before and those who will come after.

For African-American people, I am in the business of inventing a reality that gives a different perspective - on history, on crime, on art, on love.