Quotes About History

Once initiated there were but few public men who would have the courage to oppose it. Experience proves that the man who obstructs a war in which his nation is engaged, no matter whether right or wrong, occupies no enviable place in life or history. Better for him, individually, to advocate "war, pestilence, and famine," than to act as obstructionist to a war already begun.

Yesterday's rose endures in its name, we hold empty names.

After so many years even the fire of passion dies, and with it what was believed the light of the truth. Who of us is able to say now whether Hector or Achilles was right, Agamemnon or Priam, when they fought over the beauty of a woman who is now dust and ashes?

If you want to become a man of letters and perhaps write some Histories one day, you must also lie and invent tales, otherwise your History would become monotonous. But you must act with restraint. The world condemns liars who do nothing but lie, even about the most trivial things, and it rewards poets, who lie only about the greatest things.

Everything is repeated, in a circle. History is a master because it teaches us that it doesn't exist. It's the permutations that matter.

Memory is a stopgap for humans, for whom time flies and what is passed is passed.

Yes, I know, it's not the truth, but in a great history little truths can be altered so that the greater truth emerges.

Dios ha muerto, el arte dejó de existir, la historia ha llegado a su fin, y yo mismo no me siento del todo bien.

The Templars' mental confusion makes them indecipherable. That's why so many people venerate them.

The library is testimony to truth and to error

Here's a book about gnomes, undines, salamanders, elves, sylphs, fairies, but it, too, brings in the origins of Aryan civilization. The SS, apparently, are descended from the Seven Dwarfs.

History is a blood-drenched enigma and the world an error.

New Orleans is not in the grip of a neurosis of a denied past; it passes out memories generously like a great lord; it doesn't have to pursue the real thing.

Es inútil, ya no tenemos la sabiduría de los antiguos, ¡se acabó la época de los gigantes! -Somos enanos -admitió Guillermo-, pero enanos subidos a los hombros de aquellos gigantes, y, aunque pequeños, a veces logramos ver más allá de su horizonte.

The fact that for tens of thousands of years humanity has used warfare as a solution for states of disequilibrium has no more demonstrable value than the fact that in the same period humanity learned to resolve states of psychological imbalance by using alcohol or other equally devastating substances.

Jangan percaya begitu saja pada apa yang disebut sebagai sejarah

there is a constant in the average American imagination and taste, for which the past must be preserved and celebrated in full-scale authentic copy, a philosophy of immortality as duplication. It dominates the relation with the self, with the past, not infrequently with the present, always with History, and, even, with the European tradition.

U.Eco habla de la época greco-latina]: No es que no hayan existido mujeres que filosofaran. Es que los filósofos han preferido olvidarlas, tal vez después de haberse apropiado de sus ideas /[U. Eco is talking about the Greco-Latin era]; It is not that there had not been women philosophers. It is that male philosophers have preferred to forget them, perhaps after having appropriated their ideas.

Stat rosa pristina nomine, nomina nuda tenemus. -Yesterday's rose endures in its name, we hold empty names.

Only by having a sense of history's trajectory (even if one does not believe in Parousia) can one love earthly reality and believe—with charity—that there is still room for Hope.

As the Chinese said, to curse someone: "May you live in an interesting period.

All I know about the Jews is what my grandfather taught me. They are the most godless people, he used to say. They start off from the idea that good must happen here, not beyond the grave. Therefore, they work only for the conquest of this world.

Wer nicht liest, wird mit 70 Jahren nur ein einziges Leben gelebt haben: Sein eigenes. Wer liest, wird 5000 Jahre gelebt haben: Er war dabei, als Kain Abel tötete, als Renzo Lucia heiratete, als Leopardi die Unendlichkeit bewunderte. Denn Lesen ist eine Unsterblichkeit nach hinten." – Der Name der Rose (S. 124 bis 130) von Umberto Eco

At most, recognizing that our history was inspired by many tales we now recognize as false should make us alert, ready to call constantly into question the very tales we believe true, because the criterion of the wisdom of the community is based on constant awareness of the fallibility of our learning.