Quotes About History

Galen's writings were the indisputable source of medical authority for more than a thousand years. "It is I, and I alone, who has revealed the true path of medicine," Galen wrote with his usual modesty. And yet Galen never conducted anything resembling a modern experiment. Why

Counterfactuals highlight how radically open the possibilities once were and how easily our best-laid plans can be blown away by flapping butterfly wings. Immersion in what-if history can give us a visceral feeling for Taleb's vision of radical indeterminacy.

Some people make headlines while others make history.

History has been so fascinated with Alexander the Great that it has overlooked the genius of his father. But by his supreme skill at diplomacy, his mastery of intrigue, and his revolutionary innovations in warfare, Philip laid the foundation for everything his son achieved. Yet

No other army in history had made such an extended campaign nor had any previous expedition discovered and recorded so much new information about distant lands and peoples.

These fasces were a praetor's visible symbol of the right to use force (hence our term fascism).

I love the hush of those deserted places, those old battlefields, always so breathtaking, as if we, as a species, have decided to fight only in beautiful places.

Albert Fine murió en 1987

The past is reinvented and becomes the future. But the lineage is everything.

Killing Tutsis was a political tradition in postcolonial Rwanda; it brought people together.

Because of all this mixing, ethnographers and historians have lately come to agree that Hutus and Tutsis cannot properly be called distinct ethnic groups. Still

Genocide, after all, is an exercise in community building...In 1994, Rwanda was regarded in much of the rest of the world as the exemplary instance of the chaos and anarchy associated with collapsed states. In fact, the genocide was the product of order, authoritarianism, decades of modern political theorizing and indoctrination, and one of the most meticulously admistered states in history.

The only good Indians I ever saw were dead.

Depressing realization sets in. Writing was invented not by human beings but by accountants. Most of the early writing systems are records of how much crap people own, how much money they have, how much money they owe, and other lowering/boastful facts of human life.

The Nude Male was published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson and was largely full of pictures of Greek vases, which hadn't been considered rude since Queen Victoria died.

1917 (or possibly 1918) poem, 'Greater Love': 'Red lips are not so red/ As the stained stones kissed by the English dead

Beamish had seen the government as dominated by Jews, with Rufus Isaacs, Sir Alfred Mond and Edwin Montagu as Lloyd George's advisors; Britain was now ruled by a 'Jewalition' and Jews were responsible for a quarter of the war's casualties.

Most history is a record of triumphs, disasters, and follies of top people. The black hole in it is the way of life of mute, inglorious men and women who made no nuisance of themselves in the world.

he sees that it does not accord with the practices of the sage-kings of old and does not promote the benefit of the people in the world today. And so our teacher Mozi says, "Musical performances are wrong!

I love thee, London! for thy many men, And for thy mighty deeds and scenes of glory.

On returning to Germany, he rejoined Hitler, whom he believed to be the only man who could make Germany great again.

If there's one thing history has taught me to believe it is that it's dangerous to believe in anything very much.

Well, now I come to think of it, there was another Johann Diesbach, Johann Jacob Diesbach, a Berlin paint maker who invented the color Prussian blue, back in 1706. The whole Prussian army wore coats of Prussian blue until the Great War, when it moved over to field gray. At one time every Berlin schoolboy used to know the name of Johann Jacob Diesbach. So how about that, sir? How about Prussian blue?

His name was Kurt Waldheim.