Quotes About History

The pattern of praise and punishment is a familiar one throughout history: those who line up in the service of the state are typically praised by the general intellectual community, and those who refuse to line up in service of the state are punished.

If it is plausible that ideology will in general serve as a mask for self-interest, then it is a natural presumption that intellectuals, in interpreting history or formulating policy, will tend to adopt an elitist position, condemning popular movements and mass participation in decision making, and emphasizing rather the necessity for supervision by those who possess the knowledge and understanding that is required (so they claim) to manage society and control social change.

In reality, a few years later a North–South compact permitted the slaveholding states to reinstitute a form of slavery by effectively criminalizing black life, providing a cheap and disciplined labor force for much of the industrial revolution, a system that persisted until World War II created the need for free labor. The ugly history is being reenacted under the vicious "drug war" of the past generation, since Ronald Reagan.

In the U.S. Constitution there was a category of creatures called three-fifth humans—the enslaved population. They weren't considered persons. And in fact women were barely considered persons, so they didn't have rights.

If American opinion has been uninformed, misinformed and prejudiced, the missionaries are largely to blame. Interpreting history in terms of the advance of Christianity, they have given an inadequate, distorted, and occasionally a grotesque picture of Moslems and Islam.

Small wonder that President Obama advises us to look forward, not backward—a convenient doctrine for those who hold the clubs. Those who are beaten by them tend to see the world differently, much to our annoyance.

One lesson is that to understand what is happening we should attend not only to critical events of the real world, often dismissed from history, but also to what leaders and elite opinion believe, however tinged with fantasy. Another lesson is that alongside the flights of fancy concocted to terrify and mobilize the public (and perhaps believed by some who are trapped in their own rhetoric), there

The enormous public relations industry, from its Origins early in this Century, has been dedicated to the control of the public mind as Business Leaders described the task and they acted on their words, surely one of the central themes of modern history. The fact that the public relations industry has its roots and major centers in the country that is most free is exactly which we should expect, with a proper understanding of Humes Maxim.

The United States is a business-run society, much more so than comparable ones. Correspondingly, it has a very brutal labor history . . .

The historical roots of these differences between Europe and the United States are familiar. Centuries of conflict imposed a nation-state system in Europe, and the experience of World War II convinced Europeans that they must abandon their traditional sport of slaughtering one another

The long tradition of naiveté and self-righteousness that disfigures our intellectual history, however, must serve as a warning to the third world, if such a warning is needed, as to how our protestations of sincerity and benign intent are to be interpreted.

they don't even mention the logical possibility of a third position: namely, that the United States did not have the right, either the legal or the moral right, to intervene by force in the internal affairs of Vietnam. We leave to history the task of judging the debate between the hawks and the respectable doves, but the third position, opposed to the other two, is excluded from discussion.

at every stage of history our concern must be to dismantle those forms of authority and oppression that survive from an era when they might have been justified in terms of the need for security or survival or economic development, but that now contribute to—rather than alleviate—material and cultural deficit. If

History doesn't go in a straight line... Over time there's a kind of a general trajectory towards a more just society, with regressions and reversals of course.

Among the many reasons for regarding the fabled American exceptionalism with some skepticism is that the doctrine appears to be close to a historical universal, including the worst monsters: Hitler, Stalin, the conquistadors; it is hard to find an exception. Aggression and terror are almost invariably portrayed as self-defense and dedication to inspiring visions.

Sede Hanibal Barca i Filip II u nekom kafi?u i pricaju o ratnim taktima , kad nailazi odnekud oftamolog te im rekne - A jelte vas dvojica , da nijeste možda naletili na Vasilija Drugog Bugaroubicu? xoxoxoxoxo

Settler colonialism is a conceptual fine-tuning on the theories and histories of colonialism. Settler movements that sought a new life and identity in already inhabited countries were not unique to Palestine.

en un extremo hay sociedades indígenas, tribales, que tratan de detener la carrera hacia el desastre. En el otro extremo, las sociedades más ricas y poderosas de la historia del mundo, como Estados Unidos y Canadá, corren a toda velocidad para destruir el entorno lo antes posible.

Un estudio concluye que «Estados Unidos tenía más muertes al final del siglo XIX debido a la violencia laboral, en términos absolutos y como proporción de la población total, que cualquier otro país salvo la Rusia zarista».3 El término «violencia laboral» es una forma educada de referirse a la violencia del Estado y de la seguridad privada contra los obreros. Eso continuó hasta finales de la década de 1930;

George Orwell coined the useful term "unperson" for creatures denied personhood because they don't abide by state doctrine. We may add the term "unhistory" to refer to the fate of unpersons, expunged from history on similar grounds.

No podemos evitar abordar cuestiones complejas y controvertidas —especialmente cuando son significativas desde el punto de vista humano— con un punto de vista definido, con intereses personales, si se quiere, y estos intereses tienen que ser evidentes, de manera que aquellos a los que nos dirigimos puedan entender de dónde venimos en nuestras opciones e interpretaciones de los hechos de la historia.

For a privileged minority, Western democracy provides the leisure, the facilities, and the training to seek the truth lying hidden behind the veil of distortion and misrepresentation, ideology, and class interest through which the events of current history are presented to us. The responsibilities of intellectuals, then, are much deeper than what Macdonald calls the "responsibility of peoples," given the unique privileges that intellectuals enjoy.

Just before I'd moved to New York, two historic events had occurred: The birth control pill had been invented, and the first Julia Child cookbook was published. As a result, everyone was having sex, and when the sex was over, you cooked something.

The Flavour of France.