Quotes About History

I like men who have a future and women who have a past, he answered.

The one charm of the past is that it is the past.

If one doesn't talk about a thing, it has never happened.

The one charm of the past is that it is past.

Seven fine broads are at his side. They sing songs of the Mexican Revolution which they learned from their grandmothers

One cannot launch a new history — the idea is altogether unthinkable; there would not be the continuity and tradition. Tradition cannot be contrived or learned. In its absence one has, at the best, not history but 'progress' — the mechanical movement of a clock hand, not the sacred succession of interlinked events.

Harlem was home; was where we belonged; where we knew and were known in return; where we felt most alive; where, if need be, somebody had to take us in. Harlem defined us, claiming our consciousness and, I suspect, our unconsciousness. (Page 64)

The common man wants nothing of life but health, longevity, amusement, comfort -- happiness. He who does not despise this should turn his eyes from world history, for it contains nothing of the sort. The best that history has created is great suffering.

Christian theology is the grandmother of Bolshevism.

The question of whether world peace will ever be possible can only be answered by someone familiar with world history. To be familiar with world history means, however, to know human beings as they have been and always will be. There is a vast difference, which most people will never comprehend, between viewing future history as it will be and viewing it as one might like it to be. Peace is a desire, war is a fact; and history has never paid heed to human desires and ideals ...

History is direction—but Nature is extension—ergo, everyone gets eaten by a bear.

Man makes history; woman is history. The reproduction of the species is feminine: it runs steadily and quietly through all species, animal or human, through all short-lived cultures. It is primary, unchanging, everlasting, maternal, plantlike, and cultureless. If we look back we find that it is synonymous with life itself.

World-history is the history of the great Cultures, and peoples are but the symbolic forms and vessels in which the men of these Cultures fulfil their Destinies.

We have learned that history is something that takes no notice whatever of our expectations.

Historians have often felt that the discovery of facts (even true ones) is only a preliminary to a higher activity, that of understanding the facts. And at this point history becomes dangerous, because it disturbs the dust of the past

1663 Reverend John Eliot publishes the New Testament in the Massachusetts language, with the help of Indian translators and printers. 1775 The U.S. Continental Congress appropriates five hundred dollars to establish Dartmouth College in New Hampshire for the education of Indian children. 1778–1871 The U.S. enters into over 370 treaties with various American Indian nations. More than one hundred include specific provisions for educational facilities.

I prate of ancient poets' monstrous lies, Ne'er seen or now or then by human eyes.

The cowboy has now gone to worlds invisible; the wind has blown away the white ashes of his campfires; but the empty sardine box lies rusting over the face of the Western earth.

Hol a saját (irodalmi) múltunk tudatos számbavétele? Egy nyugati könyvesboltban tényleg sírva lehet fakadni: Goethe elölrÅ'l, Goethe hátulról, férfival, kisgyerekkel, kecskével, hajnalban, Schillerrel, Thomas Mann-nal, futólag Kleisttel. Ahogy egy kultúra birtokba veszi önmagát...

Oklahoma holds ancient power within its red dirt

The FHA manual was perhaps the single most detrimental document in the history of urbanism in the United States. With a few lines of anti-density, racist planning policy, the federal government essentially forced the creation of the suburbs and the near-complete disinvestment of the inner city.

Reflect, old man! We have been pals for years. Your mother likes me. No, she doesn't. Well, anyway, we were at school together and you owe me a tenner. Oh, well, he said in a resigned sort of voice.

He was a red-headed chap, and my experience of the red-headed is that you can always expect high blood pressure from them in times of stress. The first Queen Elizabeth had red hair, and look what she did to Mary Queen of Scots.

Inasmuch as the scene of this story is that historic pile, Belpher Castle, in the county of Hampshire, it would be an agreeable task to open it with a leisurely description of the place, followed by some notes on the history of the Earls of Marshmoreton, who have owned it since the fifteenth century.