Quotes About History

Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes -- our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking around.

Probably throughout history the worst things ever done in the world on a large scale by decent people have been done in the name of religion, and I do not think that has entirely ceased to be true at the present day.

Chronicles are not explanatory of what they record.

There again, the acceleration of history is the job of ruthless men.

An image of thought called philosophy has been formed historically and it effectively stops people from thinking.

I was a daydreamer, and there is a lot of history and geography and science I missed out on because I was in my head. And I regret that.

people typically overemphasize risks that arrive from outside the group and underestimate the ones that are inside the group. Throughout history pandemics have been associated with xenophobia, even if people are complacent about domestic infection risks.

We all know that history is personal, so here is my brief "Autobiography by Bathroom." I've titled it "To Pee or Not to Pee." Not to get all Shakespearean or anything, but the process does involve shocks that flesh is heir to, the baring of bodkins, swearing, and what can feel like a sea of troubles.

Venetians prefer being merchants to philosophers.

We are all specks of dust against the specter of Time. Is ninety years so different from forty in the scheme of things? We are all the walking dead of history.

Despite humanity's grisly history of war, famine, disease, corruption—despite the fact that not just death but pain and suffering and debilitation are fundamental parts of the human experience—our musicians, our filmmakers, our poets, and even our laws remain profoundly preoccupied with questions of love. Love is not a thing to be trifled with.

The 1918 epidemic came in two waves, a mild flu in the spring of 1918 followed by the killer flu in the fall.

Then the influenza epidemic arrived. Unlike the plague of Athens, unlike the Black Death, unlike even the cholera epidemic that felled William Sproat and the other cholera epidemics to come in that century, the flu epidemic had no chronicler.

By the dawn of the twentieth century, for the first time since cities had come into existence 5,000 years before, infectious diseases were staunched to such an extent that cities were able to remain stable, and even grow, without depending on a constant stream of migrants from the countryside. It was a remarkable change.

I felt unsteady as I lead Xerxes to his seat. Women in his kingdom were but dressing for a man's bed and a satisfactory way to provide heirs. The king had once banished a queen on the advice of his counsel. Now would he accept the word of his queen and banish the adviser? Dear God, I pleaded silently, how can it be that I should change history? I am a prisoner myself – how can I asked for the freedom of a nation?

Perhaps I am old-fashioned, but black and white films still hold an affectionate place in my heart; they have an incomparable mystique and mood.

Nadie puede decir cuál habría sido nuestra historia si tanta tribu no hubiese sido aniquilada. Los españoles decían que debían civilizarnos, hacernos abandonar la barbarie. Pero ellos, con barbarie, nos dominaron, nos despoblaron. En pocos años hicieron más sacrificios humanos que nosotros en el tiempo largo que transcurrió desde las primeras festividades.

Él apenas tenía pasado y el que tenía estaba todo lleno de ella.

Sellele ajale - meie ajale - on omane, et kõik rahvad ja inimesed maa peal on leidnud end ühel hetkel jäägi olukorrast

One of the lessons of Auschwitz is that it is infinitely harder to grasp the mind of an ordinary person than to understand the mind of a Spinoza or Dante.

Part of the trouble is modern. Since the rescuing of the texts by the great philologists of the Nineteenth Century, one school after another has tried to inject its preconceptions into their meaning, according to the way in which they read the history of philosophical ideas. Part is ancient. And it begins very early. Plato, Aristotle, Eudemus, Theophrastus, Proclus, Simplicius are clearly at odds about what Parmenides may really have meant.

the line of mathematical imagination and that of philological critique seem to have faced each other in mutual incomprehension through the centuries

In that dark night which shrouds from our eyes the most remote antiquity, a light appears which cannot lead us astray; I speak of this incontestable truth: the social world is certainly the work of man.

Wrongs committed in the distant past are far easier to condemn than to rectify.