Quotes About History

Every man among us is more fit to meet the duties and responsibilities of citizenship because of the perils over which, in the past, the nation has triumphed; because of the blood and sweat and tears, the labor and the anguish, through which, in the days that have gone, our forefathers moved on to triumph.

If there is not the war, you don't get the great general; if there is not a great occasion, you don't get a great statesman; if Lincoln had lived in a time of peace, no one would have known his name.

We are the heirs of the ages

Americans learn only from catastrophes and not from experience.

If there is not the war, you don't get the great general; if there is not the great occasion, you don't get the great statesman; if Lincoln had lived in times of peace, no one would know his name now.

History which is not professedly utilitarian, history which is didactic only as great poetry is unconsciously didactic, may yet possess that highest form of usefulness, the power to thrill the souls of men with stories of strength and craft and daring, and to lift them out of their common selves to the heights of high endeavor.

We are going to start the war from right here. (Utah Beach, Normandy, June 6, 1944)

We are nothing if we are not the sum total of our physique and the history of the actions of our physique--that we carry with us in body and in memory. (Body - Michael McClure)

a Virgin Islan'." "Then you are American," I said. I remembered from school that we had bought the Virgins from Denmark. He laughed. "I suppose, young bahss. I nevar gave it much thought. I sail all d'islan's, as well as Venezuela, Colombo, Panama.… I jus' nevar gave

If you go back through 2000 years, I guess luck, Marx, and God have made history, the three of them together.

Each civilization, each nation, each family, each profession, each sex and each class has its own history. Humans have so far been interested mainly in their own private roots, and have therefore never claimed the whole of the inheritance into which they were born, the legacy of everybody's past experience. Each generation searches only for what it thinks it lacks, and recognizes only what it knows already.

Everybody's style of speaking is a mixture of echoes dating from different epochs of the past: hers recalls the prudent and modest civil servants of the last century who were proud that they represented the state and who took care not to compromise themselves by saying the wrong thing.

Everything that is remembered about the past is washed, and often drowned, in nostalgia, pride, illusions and passions of all kinds.

The past and the present kept smashing into each other in completely untenable ways.

There is more carbon in the atmosphere trapping heat and moisture than ever before in the 165,000 years of human history.

An important book for understanding the history of our economic boom & bust cycles. It's an eye-opening account of how we are repeating the mistakes of the 1760's, 1850's, and 1920's. The author is a brilliant writer and is so good at explaining even the most complex subjects in a compelling & easy to understand way. The next crash will be painful but it's important to understand what is being done to us, and how we can learn from history and take action.

And when any internal or external force tried to change the past, they responded with anger and resolution: "We will die before we change." And they did.

Yes, we respect the past. At times we revere the past. But we can't live in the past.

The most pervasive and common thread of our autopsies was that the deceased churches lived for a long time with the past as hero. They held on more tightly with each progressive year. They often clung to things of the past with desperation and fear. And when any internal or external force tried to change the past, they responded with anger and resolution: "We will die before we change.

If we got into a situation where people start burning our records, then bring it on. That's the whole point. The gloaming has begun. We're in the darkness. This has happened before. Go read some history.

Well, I've been reading a lot about the fifty years since the Second World War, about Western foreign policy and all that. I try not to let it get to me, but sometimes I just think that there's no hope.

Too many historical writers are the votaries of cults, which, by definition are dedicated to whitewashing warts and hanging halos.

We pursue our own solitary passions and seldom look up, seldom sense that it is we ourselves who form the swelling flood of history, the dark constellation of events we would sooner lay at the feet of others. Until the storm finally gathers, and then we look up and we grow afraid, and we say: This is not what I intended.

Hold firmly that our faith is identical with that of the ancients. Deny this, and you dissolve the unity of the Church.