Quotes About History

That most unfortunate war, which I deeply deplore.

The worst mistake of first contact, made throughout history by individuals on both sides of every new encounter, has been the unfortunate habit of making assumptions. It often proved fatal.

It's unfortunate that a certain type of stripped-down classicism became the in-house architectural language for 20th-century fascism. Can an architectural language recover from such an association? Yes, I think it can, because in the end what you're talking about is a column and beam.

A lot of bands have an unfortunate past; we've dodged a lot of bullets when it comes to that.

In them days, it was just still not illegal to kill an Indian. If you killed an Indian, you'd be very unfortunate if you got probation - most of them were released immediately.

I think it's unfortunate when people say that there is just one true story of science. For one thing, there are many different sciences, and historians will tell different stories corresponding to different things.

The colonial period has been the proving ground in America for the new social history, which concentrates on the ordinary doings of ordinary people rather than on high culture and high politics. Unfortunately ordinary people, almost by definition, leave behind only faint traces of their existence.

Unfortunately, I never saw Pele play. What I know of him is through my grandfather, my dad's dad, who used to talk to me and tell me about how he played.

Every artistic form has its golden age, and unfortunately I think the golden age for whatever I do probably ended about 1990.

Why are we reading a Shakespeare play or 'Huckleberry Finn?' Well, because these works are great, but they also tell us something about the times in which they were created. Unfortunately, previous eras and dead authors often used language or accepted as normal sentiments that we now find unacceptable.

Tony Blair is a brilliant politician. Unfortunately, his legacy is entwined with George W. Bush because of Iraq.

. . . hope resides in the future, while perspective and wisdom are almost always found by looking to the past.

This is the first generation in all of recorded history that can do something about the scourge of poverty. We have the means to do it. We can banish hunger from the face of the earth.

Beards in olden times, were the emblems of wisdom and piety.

Of all the things in nature, the formation and endowment of man was singled out by the ancients.

Technology plows through history at an accelerating rate, shifting the burden of production off labor into the nonhuman factor because man uses his highest ingenuity to avoid servile labor.

But do not despise the lore that has come down from distant years; for oft it may chance that old wives keep in memory word of things that once were needful for the wise to know.

Proverbs were anterior to boots, and formed the wisdom of the vulgar, and in the earliest ages were the unwritten laws of morality.

Yes, the brutalities of progress are called revolutions. When they are over, this is recognised: that the human race has been harshly treated, but that it has advanced.

I'm the G when you spell OG

...History is the key to the unity of a people. Its nostalgia pulls them together. Its gloom separates them further. Its successes make them stronger.

First it was "The Silent Generation", then "Generation Boomers", then "Generation X", then "Generation Y" and as last "Generation Z".

Wise is the one who flavors the future with some salt from the past. Becoming dust is no threat to the phoenix born from the ash.

There is no new thing under the sun. Is there any thing whereof it may be said, 'See, this is new?' it had been already of old time, which was before us.