Quotes About History

You can tell the state of civilization by the way people dress. If the people who fought two World Wars came back to 2010 and saw all of us running around in tracksuits, what would they think? It is just about being sloppy.

History is cyclical, and it would be foolhardy to assume that the culture wars will never return.

People ask me whether I see 'Star Wars' as a comedy or a tragedy, but it's really neither - it's partly a history, like 'Henry V,' and partly a fantasy, like 'The Tempest.'

The Bible that I will take my oath on reminds me of the 100th anniversary of the end of the war to end all wars. It was a Bible taken into battle by my wife's grandfather who had probably never ventured beyond three or four counties in North and South Carolina.

I think the arc of history is long, and it bends toward justice. And I think that's what the 'Star Wars' message is. You know, the dark side is in the human heart. And chaos is very troubling for an individual or for a culture, which can lead you to authoritarian leaders. But the arc of history is on the right side. I believe that.

There are similarities between historical novels and science fiction. Being thrown into the Napoleonic Wars is just as much of a different world as space.

I remember saying that wars must not be glorified, but wars must be remembered.

Noble ideas, great sentiments have always existed and have always been transmitted, but wars have never ceased.

From Caesar's legions to the Napoleonic wars. From the Reformation, the Enlightenment and the industrial revolution to the defeat of nazism. We have helped to write European history, and Europe has helped write ours.

Mubarak came to power as a hero who fought bravely in Egypt's wars and headed the nation's air force.

Over my career, I've reinvented myself numerous times. I covered the Pentagon, the State Department, and the CIA. I wrote about labor wars, trade wars and real wars. I chronicled a nuclear plant meltdown and the defeat of Communism. I co-founded a couple of media businesses.

We are a resilient country. We've been through a Civil War; we've been through two World Wars. We've been through a Great Depression; we even made it through Jimmy Carter! We will make it through the Obama years!

This was a continent of divisions, of wars, of conflicts, of divergences, differences... When I am in Asia, in Africa, people admire what we have managed to do. Europe is beautiful seen from other continents.

Everyone knows that Apple crushed Microsoft in the mobile era. But it was exactly the opposite in the PC Wars of the 1980s and 1990s.

If the graves of the thousands of victims who have fallen in the terrible wars of the two races had been placed in line the philanthropist might travel from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from the Lakes to the Gulf, and be constantly in sight of green mounds.

For many centuries, even thousands of years, patriotism worked quite well. Of course, it led to wars an so forth, but we shouldn't focus too much on the bad.

When you see 'Star Wars', and you see Greedo hustle up to Solo, you know they have a history; you understand that there's a dude named Jabba the Hutt who's after him, and Greedo is going to try to shoot him and get the money. You get what's going on there.

For many years prior to the 1990s, European integration was embraced and supported by a large majority of citizens. A united Europe, bound by commonly-held democratic values, was perceived as an essential and effective buffer against the Soviet empire. A united Europe made a repeat of the First and Second World Wars almost unthinkable.

I see lots of cycles, for sure. There's the whole post-Star Wars era, but I don't think it's the whole story.

Looking back, I think we were all quite mature, surprisingly responsible. In earlier wars, boys of our age had just gone off to raise hell or enlist or both, but we stayed dutifully at our desks doing tomorrow's homework.

I want to make someone walk straight, but I've left my sons nothing but wars.

Wars have always started over religion.

Japan is the only country in the world to have suffered the ravages of atomic bombing. That experience left an indelible mark on the hearts of our people, making them passionately determined to renounce all wars.

The history of England, who has always dealt most harshly with her vanquished foe in the few European wars in which she has taken part in modern times, gives us Germans an idea of the fate in store for us if defeated.