Quotes About History

If low self-esteem correlates with resistance to change and clinging to the known and familiar, then never in the history of the world has low self-esteem been as economically disadvantageous as it is today.

A dead man sits on all our judgment seats; and living judges do but search out and repeat his decisions. We read in dead men's books! We laugh a dead men's jokes, and cry at dead men's pathos!

Tradition,—which sometimes brings down truth that history has let slip, but is oftener the wild babble of the time, such as was formerly spoken at the fireside and now congeals in newspapers,—tradition is responsible for all contrary averments.

Jim Crow, moreover, was seen executing his world-renowned dance, in gingerbread.

The wrong-doing of one generation lives into the successive ones.

Like all that pertains to crime, it seemed never to have known a youthful era.

At the other end....was provided a deep and cushioned seat. Here, on the cushion, lay a folio tome, probably of the Chronicles of England, or other such substantial literature; even as, in our own days, we scatter gilded volumes on the centre-table, to be turned over by the casual guest.

The past is but a coarse and sensual prophecy of the present and the future.

While we fancy ourselves going straight forward, and attaining, at every step, an entirely new position of affairs, we do actually return to something long ago tried and abandoned, but which we now find etherealized, refined, and perfected to its ideal. The past is but a coarse and sensual prophecy of the present and the future.

the sun was still marking the passage of the first bright hour in a history that was not destined to be all so bright.

There is no instance, in all history, of the human will and intellect having perfected any great moral reform by methods which it adapted to that end; but the progress of the world, at every step, leaves some evil or wrong on the path behind it, which the wisest of mankind, of their own set purpose, could never have found the way to rectify.

as to the better centuries that are coming, the artist was surely right. His error lay, in supposing that his age, more than any past or future one, is destined to see the tattered garments of Antiquity exchanged for a new suit, instead of gradually renewing themselves by patchwork…

En la posterioridad inmediata, la generación siguiente a la de los primeros emigrantes mostró la tonalidad más negra del puritanismo, y de tal manera oscurecía con ella el rostro de la nación, que todos los años siguientes no han sido suficientes para limpiarlo. Tenemos que volver a aprender el arte olvidado de la alegría.

These names of gentleman and lady had a meaning, in the past history of the world, and conferred privileges, desirable, or otherwise, on those entitled to bear them. In the present—and still more in the future condition of society—they imply, not privilege, but restriction.

And wise Uncle Venner, passing slowly from the ruinous porch, seemed to hear a strain of music, and fancied that sweet Alice Pyncheon-after witnessing these deeds, this bygone woe and this present happiness, of her kindred mortals-had given one farewell touch of a spirit's joy upon her harpsichord, as she floated heavenward from the House of the Seven Gables

Así, antes que nadie, el huésped que visita todas las moradas humanas, la muerte, franqueó el umbral de La casa de los siete Tejados.

No longer mindful of the debt they owed the Pokanokets, without whom their parents would never have endured their first year in America, some of the Pilgrims' children were less willing to treat Native leaders with the tolerance and respect their parents had once afforded Massasoit.

The Pilgrims' descendants have proven to be, if nothing else, fruitful. In 2002 it was estimated that there were approximately 35 million descendants of the Mayflower passengers in the United States, which represents roughly 10 percent of the total U.S. population.

Over the next hundred years, more gold would be extracted from a single mine in the Black Hills (an estimated $1 billion) than from any other mine in the continental United States.

Soon after, Tom, all of twenty years old, became the only soldier in the Civil War to win two Medals of Honor. In

Without Massasoit's help, the Pilgrims would never have survived the first year, and they remained steadfast supporters of the sachem to the very end. For his part, Massasoit realized almost from the start that his own fortunes were linked to those of the English.

a space of time is a great breeder of myths.

Hindsight has a way of corrupting people's memories, inviting them to view a past event not as it actually occurred but as they wished it had occurred given the ultimate result.

This is also the story of two British generals. The first, Thomas Gage, was saddled with the impossible task of implementing his government's unnecessarily punitive response to the Boston Tea Party in December 1773.