Quotes About History

President Gordon B. Hinckley spoke of its relationship to other events in world history: "When all is said and done, when all of history is examined, when the deepest depths of the human mind have been explored, there is nothing so wonderful, so majestic, so tremendous as this act of grace.

Whatever my ancestors did to you, none of them consulted me.

People in science fiction flicks always seemed to know useful things about the places time travel took them. But what if the time traveler had been only an average history student? What then?

Japanese architecture is traditionally based on wooden structures that need renovating on a regular basis.

Italy is full of historical buildings. And Europe holds a great history of philosophy from Greece until today. I read all those books and see these buildings, and I think of where I stand when I design my architecture.

Between two throw-ins in a soccer game, right behind my back, three thousand people had been put to death.

The world can't die. Many generations have thought the world was dying. But it was only their world which was dying.

To miasto jest stolic? narodu, które wyparowuje w nico??. O tym te? trzeba powiedzie?. Ale komu? Czy tym, których ju? nie ma albo którzy odchodz? w niepami??? A mo?e tym, co po?eraj? pojedynczych ludzi i ca?e narody?

New ideas should confront old ideas. We must refer to the example of Europe. People have fought to make Europe what it is today. Freedom is not something that is served up on a plate.

My father used to say that stories are part of the most precious heritage of mankind.

Searching for a lost city is a particularly European obsession.

All our religions, however elevated and creative their visions, are also clouded by residues of ancient wounds.

Here are two enormous worlds side by side; what's remarkable is how little notice they have taken of each other. If the Western and Islamic worlds were two individual human beings, we might see symptoms of repression here. We might ask, "What happened between these two? Were they lovers once? Is there some history of abuse?

When the Common Era began—by the year one, that is—eight out of every ten humans lived between the Atlantic coast of Europe and the shores of the South China Sea.

Omar directed the Umma for ten years, and during that time he set the course of Islamic theology, he shaped Islam as a political ideology, he gave Islamic civilization its characteristic stamp, and he built an empire that ended up bigger than Rome. Any one of these achievements could have earned him a place in a who's who of history's most influential figures; the sum of them make him something like a combination of Saint Paul, Karl Marx, Lorenzo di Medici, and Napoleon.

what the Muslim world has reified over the course of history is the idea that society should be divided into a men's and a women's realm and that the point of connection between the two should only be in the private arena, so that sexuality can be eliminated as a factor in the public life of the community.

World history is always the story of how "we" got to the here and now, so the shape of the narrative inherently depends on who we mean by "we" and what we mean by "here and now.

and our footsteps rang and echoed till it sounded like the room was full of dancers, the house calling up all the people who had danced here across centuries of spring evenings, gallant girls seeing gallant boys off to war, old men and women straight-backed while outside their world disintegrated and the new one battered at their doors, all of them bruised and all of them laughing, welcoming us into their long lineage.

Ah, background checks,' I say. 'The foundation of every beautiful romance.

I'm the least fanciful guy around, but on nights when I wonder whether there was any point to my day, I think about this: the first thing we ever did, when we started turning into humans, was draw a line across the cave door and say: Wild stays out. What I do is what the first men did. They built walls to keep back the sea. They fought the wolves for the hearth fire.

The thing about old neighborhoods: people still mind each other's business.

Throughout history--even a hundred years ago, even fifty--it was discontent that was considered the threat to society, the defiance of natural law, the danger that had to be exterminated at all costs. Now it's contentment,

For some reason the past—any of our pasts—was solidly off-limits. They were like the creepy rabbits in Watership Down who won't answer any questions beginning with "Where.

I think you've got something there," said Daniel. "Not jealousy, after all: fear. It's a fascinating state of affairs. Throughout history—even a hundred years ago, even fifty—it was discontent that was considered the threat to society, the defiance of natural law, the danger that had to be exterminated at all costs. Now it's contentment. What a strange reversal.