Quotes About History

To feel our character, our personality, and our personal, hard-won history fade from being is to be exposed to whatever lies beneath these comforting, operational conveniences. What remains when the conscious and functioning self has been erased is mankind's fundamental condition – irrational, violent, guilt-wracked, despairing, and mad.

Hidden history of the turf,' Harry said. 'Commissioner called Happy Henry Carmody. Happy shot through on a big punter, Baby Martinez, came from Manila, Hawaii, somewhere like that, got into a few duels with the books. Silly bugger, really. Happy did a bit of work for him, came highly recommended too. Then one Satdee Happy had a kitbag of notes owed to Baby, thought bugger it, Baby's just some dago'll cop it sweet, go home and weep under the palm trees.

Hitler ran through his past achievements, concluding that 'the moment is favourable now'. Never one to be bashful about his own feats, he said, 'As a last factor I must in all modesty name my own person irreplaceable . . . I am convinced of my powers of intellect and decision.

Books that would have helped us understand our past, without which we are condemned to live in ignorance

We know that, over the past 10,000 years, larger polities consistently outcompeted smaller ones, with the result that 99.8 percent of people today live in countries with populations of one million or more.

It takes at least 100 human generations for agricultural societies to develop into states

The first cities and states arose 5,000 years ago. One of these archaic states, the Old Kingdom of Egypt (2650–2150 BCE), the one that built the Great Pyramid of Giza, had a population of between one and two million, which is beginning to approach the social scale of the most complex social insects, ants and termites. The

Such perfection endures. For more than two millennia after horse-riding was invented, the warhorse remained the most important military technology bar none. A plentiful supply of horses was critical even in the 19th century, well after firearms had replaced the bows and arrows. Have you ever wondered why Napoleon, who won all of his battles until 1812, lost one battle after another in 1813 and 1814, leading to defeat and abdication? The surprising answer is: horses.

science is not only about building carefully-constructed theories that explain general phenomena. It is also, and primarily, about distinguishing good explanations from bad ones. This is where traditional history has been deficient. Historians have created, and continue to create, new explanations, but they are not in the business of testing them with data.

Gradually, human societies started extricating themselves from the worst forms of oppression. Human sacrifice and deified rulers went out of fashion. Slavery was outlawed, and privileges were taken away from nobles. Human societies regained much of the lost ground. We are still not as egalitarian as hunter-gatherers --there are the poor and the billionaires-- but we are much better off than we were during the days of god-kings.

As a result, periods of intense conflict tend to recur with a period of roughly two generations (40–60 years). These swings in the social mood may be termed "bi-generation cycles" because they involve alternating generations that are either prone to conflict, or not.

Contrary to general belief, I do not believe that friends are necessarily the people you like best, they are merely the people who got there first.

I love history. It's so old." - Attributed to Peter Ustinov.

At some point, for all eternity, there will be no more unmerited suffering: this present darkness, "the age of evil", will eventually be remembered as a brief flicker at the beginning of human history. Every evil done by the wicked to the innocent will have been avenged, and every tear will have been wiped away

The past is no Roman road, but more often a maze...

Northern Kentucky University's criminal sociologist J. Robert Lilly, looked closely at the statistics of wartime rapes committed by American GI's serving in Britain, France and Germany. To everyone's horror, Lilly reported that American liberators raped 14,000 to 17,000 women between 1942 and 1945 in those 3 European countries alone.

I'm insignificant?" Geoff said, standing up from his rock. "I don't matter?" ... You see, because most people have an influence on the course of history, we can't ask them to do this job becasue we'd be interfering with the past. You, however, are so insignificant, that even if I were to kill you on the spot, history would remain completely unchanged.

to come as lodestones for the history we have

Of India he (Sir John Strachey) had pronounced (and in reissues of "India: Its Administration and Progress" continually repeated) that nothing by that name existed. "This is the first and most essential fact about India that can be learned.

Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas Caritat, marquis de Condorcet (1743–1794), who thought that the French Revolution was the dividing line between the past and a 'glorious future', believed there were three outstanding issues in history – the destruction of inequality between nations, the progress of equality within one and the same nation, and the perfecting of mankind.

What is Human history, if not an ongoing succession of greater technologies grinding lesser ones beneath their boots?

Cities are the graveyard of Mankind.

What is Human history, if not an ongoing succession of greater technologies grinding lesser ones beneath their boots? But

Semmelweis reflex. They