Quotes About History

It is not altogether a bad thing to have criminal ancestors. An arsonist grandfather may bequeath one a nose for smelling smoke.

The classics are only primitive literature. They belong to the same class as primitive machinery and primitive music and primitive medicine.

Brant had said my embellishing constituted a disservice to history and its players. But I believed the opposite. Marooning them on the forlorn island of Only What We Know, a place whose boundaries were determined by the scant information provided by a handful of surviving documents, seemed the greater disservice. I paid homage with my imagination, and hoped I might get visitors to do the same.

When you stand inside somebody's library, you get a powerful sense of who they are, and not just who they are now but who they've been. . . . It's a wonderful thing to have in a house. It's something I worry is endangered by the rise of the e-book. When you turn off an e-book, there's no map. All that's left behind is a chunk of gray plastic. ~ Lev Grossman

Compare Facebook posts to Gutenberg's Bible, and civilization seems to be going down the drain. But compare tweets to indulgences, and it's much of a muchness.

like it or not, what we dress in is a direct reflection of who we are personally, socially, and historically.

That which we call civilization is merely the accumulated debris of a chilling number of bad nights.

Our national history has so often filled us with bitterness and the feeling of helplessness.

I belong to a nation which over the past centuries has experienced many hardships and reverses. The world reacted with silence or with mere sympathy when Polish frontiers were crossed by invading armies and the sovereign state had to succumb to brutal force.

History never repeats itself, historians do.

But neither life, nor human history, turn out to support such a notion.

Books from the ancients, or the yogis and shamans, are your time capsules from yourselves to yourselves…

There are decades where nothing happens," Edney said. "And there are weeks where decades happen," Beth said, completing the Lenin quote that was their coded introduction.

Syria, Virginia.

You're ancient history, Vince. A has-been lining up for four p.m. dinner at the retirement home. You're not employable as a director anymore.

As writers we intend to make a difference, to alter people's lives for the greater good. . .this is why we write, to have an impact on society, to put a personal stamp on history. . .Art and literature are the legacies we leave to succeeding generations. We'll be forgotten, but our books and essays, our stories and poems can survive us. . .

London was the heart of the greatest empire ever known; a financial and mercantile hub for the world; but it was also infamously filthy.

He took over, and he said: 'If I have to shoot 200,000 students to save China from another 100 years of disorder, so be it.'" - Recalling how former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping dealt with the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests

If you do not know history, you think short term. If you know history, you think medium and long term

We faced tremendous odds with an improbable chance of survival. Singapore was not a natural country but man-made, a trading post the British had developed into a nodal point in their worldwide maritime empire. We inherited the island without its hinterland, a heart without a body.

I know that throughout their history, the people of the United States defended their freedom, their liberty, their justice, and their rights - if need be - with their lives. I think their courage is so admirable.

There is no one so cruel as a utopian who sees traditionalists standing in the way of the March of History.

Sex and racism have always been tied together. Look at the thousands of black men who got lynched and castrated. The reason the Klan came into being was to protect white southern women.

We have to ask, Why is there no other first-century Jew who has millions of followers today? Why isn't there a John the Baptist movement? Why, of all first-century figures, including the Roman emperors, is Jesus still worshiped today, while the others have crumbled into the dust of history?