Quotes About History

We are the sum total of what we have done and where we have been

According to legend, he had worn elegant clothes and spoken Parisian French and had his land and wealth stolen from him by carpetbaggers after the war.

The band played "La Jolie Blon" a second time. For me, there is no more haunting ballad in the world. Its origins go back to the eighteenth century, but the rendition by Harry Choates is the one that never leaves you.

The woman considered the wisest person in old New Orleans was a witch by the name of Marie LeVeau.

The advantage of having a little knowledge about the classical world is that few other people do. The second advantage is your awareness that every problem facing us today has already occurred many times previously, and the behavior of the players is always predictable and the consequences are always the same.

beautiful street in the Western world.

Individuals don't change history. History finds the individual. John Steinbeck said that.

Nova Scotia in 1755 fell into decline and became associated with ignorance and failure and poverty. The fisher-people of southern Louisiana became ashamed of who they were.

But the past is the past, and you don't get it back.

This is a lovely car. You drive it and suddenly it's 1965. What a wonderful time that was, just before everything started to change," she said. "Who could argue, Lila?" I said. Unless you were black or spent '65 in Vietnam, I thought as they drove away.

But as William Faulkner said, and as I was about to learn, the past is not only still with us, the past is not even the past. The warning call from Wally

I have long believed that my generation is a transitional one and will be the last to remember what we refer to as traditional America.

How many lives would have been spared had we not lent ourselves to the defense of a repellent cause like slavery?

The recidivists think their rap sheets have the historical importance of the Magna Carta; their jailhouse tats are the equivalent of military citations.

While many a Georgian condemned the Yankees for ravaging the countryside, it should be noted that the Confederates often treated Southerners just as badly, if not worse. Major

If you think the '80s were dumber than the '70s, either you weren't there or you weren't paying attention.

In fourteen hundred and ninety-three, Columbus stole all he could see.

Evil? Plagueis repeated. What is that? Moments ago you defined yourself as a storm. You said you were death itself. Are you evil, then, or are you simply stronger and more awake than others? Who gives more shape to sentient history: the good who adhere to the tried and true, or those who seek to rouse beings from their stupor and lead them to glory? A storm you are, but a much-needed one, to wash away the old and complacent and prune the galaxy of deadweight.

But no one outside the Emperor knew the full history of the moonlet-sized project. Some claimed that it had begun as a Separatist weapon designed by Geonosian Archduke Poggle the Lesser's hive colony for Count Dooku and the Confederacy of Independent Systems.

You look at the history of any sentient species and what do you find but tableaux of violence and slaughter. It's finger-painted on the ceilings of caves and engraved into the walls of temples.

Sidious bowed his head in deference. "In the annals of Sith history, you will be known as Plagueis the Wise." Plagueis quirked a cunning smile. "You flatter me.

All of us were fighting long before we were farming and raising livestock.

Not only did Confederate soldiers fight better; they also fought for a noble cause, the cause of state's rights, constitutional liberty, and consent of the governed. Slavery had nothing to do with it.

describing the Confederate army as a "dark, rebellious host.