Quotes About History

Americans lived in the moment, without history and thus without prophecy.

the past was so strong, it obscured the present.

One can be a product only of one's own era, not anyone else's.

Over the fireplace, he has a reproduction of Rubens' Rape of the Sabine Women." I added, in case Mr. Mancuso wasn't familiar with the classical tale, "The Romans raped the women of the Sabine tribe.

People her age had some baggage; people my age have whole warehousesful of steamer trunks.

Hollis considered the irony in this. American Jews were once thought politically unreliable by the CIA.

Subdesenvolvimento não se improvisa. É obra de séculos.

So let them pass, small people of no great significance, caught up and swept together like dead leaves in the great whirlwind of the war.

Saints, Slaves, and Blacks is a treasure. It touches on pivotal topics in American history. It is American religious history at its finest. And it dealt with complex issues of faith, religion, church, race, politics, and social standing that still impact most of us. Edward J. Blum San Diego State University

useful [and] objective," further proclaiming it "the accepted authority on its controversial topic. . . . The volume is history, not propaganda.

too] narrowly on the Mormon experience to the exclusion of forces operating within the larger society." "Notwithstanding," he proclaimed it "a valuable contribution to Mormon history. . . . [E]ssential reading for anyone interested in the development of Mormon racial policies.

Enabling people to pursue happiness and work to fulfill their dreams (while allowing customers to define what works and what doesn't) has been the most powerful engine for economic success in world history.

The present predicaments of Africa are often not a matter of personal choice: they arise from a historical situation. Their solutions are not so much a matter of personal decision as that of a fundamental social transformation of the structures of our societies starting with a real break with imperialism and its internal ruling allies. Imperialism and its comprador alliances in Africa can never develop the continent.

What do you think, Mr Alleyn? If there's another war will the young chaps come at it, same as we did, thinking it's great? And get the same jolt? What do you reckon? I'm afraid to speculate, said Alleyn.

The rise of the West is, quite simply, the pre-eminent historical phenomenon of the second half of the second millennium after Christ. It is the story at the very heart of modern history. It is perhaps the most challenging riddle historians have to solve. And we should solve it not merely to satisfy our curiosity. For it is only by identifying the true causes of Western ascendancy that we can hope to estimate with any degree of accuracy the imminence of our decline and fall.

In most history, success is over-represented, for the victors out-write the losers. In the history of networks, the opposite often applies. Successful networks evade public attention; unsuccessful ones attract it, and it is their notoriety, rather than their achievement, that leads to their over-representation.

biggest changes in history are the achievements of thinly documented, informally organized groups

Technologies come and go. The world remains a world of squares and towers.

Sometimes, as in the case of the American Revolution, crucial roles turn out to have been played by people who were not leaders but connectors.

After 1500 not all roads led to Rome

There is in fact no such thing as the future, singular; only futures, plural. There are multiple interpretations of history, to be sure, none definitive – but there is only one past. And although the past is over, for two reasons it is indispensable to our understanding of what we experience today and what lies ahead of us tomorrow and thereafter.

No serious writer would claim that the reign of Western civilization was unblemished. Yet there are those who would insist that there was nothing whatever good about it. This position is absurd.

We should not delude ourselves into thinking that our historical narratives, as commonly constructed, are anything more than retrofits.

Not the last time in Western history, the revolutionaries armed themselves with a new religion to steel themselves for greater outrageous.