Quotes About History

The end of the surrealism movement was so political, so artistically pure.

Man is not logical and his intellectual history is a record of mental reserves and compromises. He hangs on to what he can in his old beliefs even when he is compelled to surrender their logical basis.

Now, the story makes no reference to specific years—it uses that eighteen-followed-by-a-dash business which writers were so fond of in those days, I've never understood why

Europeans would like to escape from their history, a great history written in letters of blood. But others, by the hundreds of millions, are taking it up for the first time, or coming back to it.

L'ennemi d'hier est l'ami d'aujourd'hui. Il n'y a pas de politique raisonnable sans capacité d'oubli.

El historiador es un experto, no un físico. No busca las causas de la explosión en la fuerza expansiva de los gases, sino en la cerilla del fumador

Si el universo en que han vivido los hombres de los tiempos pasados no tuviera nada en común con éste en que vivo; si esos dos universos no aparecieran, para un cierto grado de abstracción, como variaciones de un mismo tema, el universo del otro me resultaría radicalmente extraño y perdería todo significado. Para que la historia entera me resulte inteligible, los vivos deben descubrirse un cierto parentesco con los muertos.

That's right,' Mel said. 'Some vassal would come along and spear the bastard in the name of love. Or whatever the fuck it was they fought over in those days.' Same things we fight over these days,' Terri said. Laura said, 'Nothing's changed.

And isn't the past inevitable, now that we call the little we remember of it "the past"? – WILLIAM MATTHEWS, from Flood

Mr Cobb was my escort. Such a nice escort, Mr Cobb. So attentive. You should see him sober. I should see him sober. Somebody should see him sober. I mean, just for the record. So it could become a part of history, that brief flashing moment, soon buried in time, but never forgotten - when Larry Cobb was sober.

Such a nice escort, Mr. Cobb. So attentive. You should see him sober. I should see him sober. Somebody should see him sober. I mean, just for the record. So it could become a part of history, that brief flashing moment, soon buried in time, but never forgotten—when Larry Cobb was sober.

Mr. Cobb was my escort, she said. Such a nice escort, Mr. Cobb. So attentive. You should see him sober. I should see him sober. Somebody should him sober. I mean, just for the record. So it could become a part of history, that brief flashing moment, soon buried in time, but never forgotten — when Larry Cobb was sober.

More men have been defeated by reports than all the steel of all the swords in history.

More men have been defeated by reports than all the steel of all the swords in history." Then

The thought struck Dennis that a hundred years before he was even born Tinuva undoubtedly knew of the river. Again he realized just how ancient the elven race was and with it came the recognition of just how much they risked when facing battle: it wasn't just a score of years in the balance, it was a score of decades.

I am not your brother. My brother Morvai died the night you were created, eledhel. And you know all that I have been since the day you left, as I know all that you have been.'.

There are cities that have no ... I don't know what to call it, an identity perhaps. A sense of being someplace different. Lots of those in the Empire. Very old cities with lots of history, but one day is much like the next.

My ancestors were conquerors, though now they are heroes in our history. Glancing at Amos, he said, But we wrote the history.

among man's strange undertakings, war stood clearly forth as the strangest.

You are summoned for no reason other than that you are a Jew, as if Jew were a mass term comparable, say, to water or salt. Here is a bit of water, we say, and any sample of it will do. All water manifests itself the same interchangeable water properties. That a Nazi should think this way about Jews is not in the least surprising. Mass terms, mass murders, mass graves: they are all of a piece.

Jewish Warsaw, which was roughly a third of Warsaw proper, was a city of rabbis and swindlers, capitalists and poets; but, most of all, it was a city of talkers. There were so many ideas in the air you could get an education simply by breathing deeply. (p. 206)

Richard Nixon had made a fatal error in ignoring the politico-meteorological dimension when he announced the expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia on April 30, 1970. The invasion of Laos, on the other hand, happened in February 1971, and the campuses were quiet. Who wants to stage a walkout in February?

We're tied to our heritage in a powerful way, and if we want to change our individual behavior or beliefs and heal ourselves, knowledge about our history becomes perhaps the most important data we need. In order to move forward, we must know what our forebears have passed on to us and what they've communicated to each other, both consciously and unconsciously, throughout the years.

But emotions teach those who are willing to pay attention. By processing them, we learn to empathize, and love ourselves and others. In fact, understanding this aspect of our being is central to healing our family history, because it holds the most powerful energy that we use to create our lives.