Quotes About History

not for nothing had Lenin pointed out that there were ten years which passed like an uneventful day, but there was also the revolutionary day which was like ten years.

Once History inhabits a crazy house, egotism may be the last tool left to History.

I met Jack Kennedy in November, 1946. We were both war heroes, and both of us had just been elected to Congress.

Since I believe that I have been a devil for many centuries and have risen in rank and been demoted, it could be asked why, with such a history, I still learned a good deal while in Russia. It is because a newly gained sophistication fades once a venture comes to an end. So we develop many new qualities of mind, but soon lose them.

By God, was Gary like Harry Truman, mediocrity enlarged by history?

The aim of these gatherings is to acquaint you with the factology of facts. One has to know whether one is dealing with the essential or the circumferential fact. Historical data, after all, tend to be not particularly factual and subject to revision by later researchers. You must look to start, therefore, with the fact that cannot be smashed into sub-particles of fact.

When America began, it was the first time in the history of civilization that a nation dared to make an enormous bet founded on this daring notion—that there is more good than bad in people.

If these really smart philosophers can't agree on what wisdom says, why should I pay them any attention? The answer is——because it's the best shot you've got. If you seriously want to improve your opinions, there's nothing better you can do than engage in a conversation with the best minds our history has produced.

He already understands that the past can't be changed. Now he's beginning to understand how easily it can be repeated.

Take all the fuming and fretting of the media with a grain of salt. Much of today's news isn't really new. Most of it has happened before and before that.

It doesn't matter whether a sequence of words is called a history or a story: that is, whether it is intended to follow a sequence of actual events or not. As far as its verbal shape is concerned, it will be equally mythical in either case. But we notice that any emphasis on shape or structure or pattern or form always throws a verbal narrative in the direction we call mythical rather than historical.(p.21)

Incarnación Felipe de la Cruz y Monte Piedras

History has the cruel reality of a nightmare, and the grandeur of man consists in his making beautiful and lasting works out of the real substance of that nightmare. Or, to put it another way, it consists in transforming the nightmare into vision; in freeing ourselves from the shapeless horror of reality--if only for an instant--by means of creation.

The past reappears because it is a hidden present.

Progress has peopled history with the marvels and monsters of technology but it has depopulated the life of man. It has given us more things but not more being.

Las épocas viejas nunca desaparecen completamente y todas las heridas, aun las más antiguas, manan sangre todavía.

La historia tiene la realidad atroz de una pesadilla; la grandeza del hombre consiste en hacer obras hermosas y durables con la sustancia real de esa pesadilla.

I do not know if the story repeats itself: I only know that people change little

Al escribir historia me refiero a la general o universal. No hay otra: lo que se llama historia patria es espejo del hombre -y entonces es también universal- o es una anécdota de sobremesa.

La historia del amor es inseparable de la historia de la libertad de la mujer.

A história é um conhecimento que se situa entre a ciência propriamente dita e a poesia. O saber histórico não é quantitativo, nem o historiador pode descobrir leis históricas. O historiador descreve como o cientista e tem visões como o poeta. (...) A história nos dá uma compreensão do passado e, por vezes, do presente. Mais do que um saber, é uma sabedoria.

La arquitectura es el testigo insobornable de la historia.

Past epochs never vanish completely, and blood still drips from all their wounds, even the most ancient.

History as the cruel reality of a nightmare, and the grandeur of man consists in his making beautiful and lasting works out of the real substance of that nightmare. Or, to put it another way, it consists in transforming the nightmare into vision; in freeing ourselves from the shapeless horror of reality - if only for an instant - by means of creation.