Quotes About History

Oh yes, we found out what happened to the Acadians. Apparently they went on a holiday, to Louisiana or someplace, and when they come back the Loyalists had moved in and taken all their land. So the Acadians killed them. Just kidding. The Acadians moved north into upper New Brunswick, where they now make up a third of the population. New Brunswick is, in essence, Canada in miniature.

To a bibliophile, there is but one thing better than a box of new books, and that is a box of old ones.

Barker believes that all poets should have the decency to be dead at least a century or two. I feel the same way about politicians.

Oklahoma City's Will Rogers World Airport was one of only three very special airports named for men who died in a plane crash.

When nations grow old the Arts grow cold And commerce settles on every tree

Drive your cart and your plow over the bones of the dead.

The Classics, it is the Classics! & not Goths nor Monks, that Desolate Europe with Wars.

And did those feet in ancient time, Walk upon Englands mountains green: And was the holy Lamb of God, On Englands pleasant pastures seen! And did the Countenance Divine, Shine forth upon our clouded hills? And was Jerusalem builded here, Among these dark Satanic Mills?

All family histories, personal histories,are as sketchy and unreliable as histories of the Phoenicians, it seems to me. We should note everything down, fill in the wide gaps if we can. Which is why I am writing this my darlings.

In my mind Greece is reduced to one vast pile of shattered marble, shimmering in a heat aze.

When he quoted Voltaire's dictum that 'the history of the human mind is the history of stupidity', he meant it from the bottom of his heart.

he recognized slavery as a vital element of social morale, for even the lowliest white still could stand with pride knowing that he was the superior of a black. Slavery gave poor whites a social status nowhere else enjoyed by the peasantry, and as proof he argued that some of the most ardent supporters of slavery were whites too poor themselves to own slaves.

Partition was a total catastrophe for Delhi,' she said. 'Those who were left behind are in misery. Those who were uprooted are in misery. The Peace of Delhi is gone. Now it is all gone.

Whoever has built a new city in Delhi has always lost it: the Pandava brethren, Prithviraj Chauhan, Feroz Shah Tughluk, Shah Jehan ... They all built new cities and they all lost them. We were no exception.

For all its faults we love this city.' Then, after a pause, she added: 'After all, we built it.

Given the somewhat dubious and sectarian reputation of madrasas today, it is worth remembering that many of the most brilliant Hindu thinkers, including, for example, the great reformer Ram Mohan Roy (1772–1833), were the products of madrasa educations.

The Tughluks have gone; Tughlukabad is a ruin; only Nizamuddin remains.

All civilization comes through literature now, especially in our country. A Greek got his civilization by talking and looking, and in some measure a Parisian may still do it. But we, who live remote from history and monuments, we must read or we must barbarise.

It's a curious thing, this thing we call civilization...we think it is an affair of epochs, and nations. It's really an affair of individuals. One brother will be civilized and the other a barbarian...All civilization comes through literature now, especially in our country. A Greek got his civilization by talking and looking, and in some measure a Parisian may still do it. But we, who live remote from history and monuments, we must read or we must barbarise.

The final word belongs to one of Truman's aides, George Elsey. "It's all well and good to come along later and say the bomb was a horrible thing," he commented subsequently. "The whole goddamn war was a horrible thing.

Curiously, the failures of Communism are more often treated as a joke than as a tragedy.

The Americans? These are people who invaded Texas and California with ethnic savagery. What do they have against us?" *

The united nations is the most concentrated assault on moral reality in the history of free institutions, and it does not do to ignore that fact or, worse, to get used to it.

To understand the world, you must first understand a place like Mississippi.