Quotes About History

HE: History has no smell. ME: Is that why we are nostalgic for it? HE: Breathe in, breathe out. The past doesn't stink like the present.

Very often history is a means of denying the past. Denying the past is to refuse to recognise its integrity.

So the past, because it is the past, is only malleable where once it was flexible.

But history is a string full of knots, the best you can do is admire it, and maybe knot it up a bit more. History is a hammock for swinging and a game for playing.

The future id foretold from the past and the future is only possible because of the past. Without past and future, the present is partial.

History is not a suicide note -- it is a record of our survival.

Spike came forward and put her arms around me. 'One day, tens of millions of years from now, someone will find me rusted into the mud of a world they have never seen, and when they crumble me between their fingers, it will be you they find.

Liberty may be gained, but can never be recovered. (Bk2:8)

The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying 'this is mine', and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society.

We should not, with Warburton, conclude from this that politics and religion have among us a common object, but that, in the first periods of nations, the one is used as an instrument for the other.

La force a fait les premiers esclaves, leur lâcheté les a perpétués.

Sparta ve Roma yok olduktan sonra, hangi devlet sonsuzcas?na sürüp gitmeyi umabilir? Sürekli bir yönetim biçimi kurmak istiyorsaki onu sonsuz yapmay? düÅŸünmeyelim.

The story of human nature is a fair romance. Am I to blame if it is not found elsewhere? I am trying to write the history of mankind. If my book is a romance, the fault lies with those who deprave mankind.

Nous voyons, même de nos jours, que les gouvernements qui se conduisent le mieux sont ceux dont on parle le moins. Nous ne savons donc que le mal ; à peine le bien fait-il époque. Il n'y a que les méchants de célèbres, les bons sont oubliés ou tournés en ridicule : et voilà comment l'histoire, ainsi que la philosophie, calomnie sans cesse le genre humain.

History tells us, that from the moment when the moral forces on which a civilisation rested have lost their strength, its final dissolution is brought about by those unconscious and brutal crowds known, justifiably enough, as barbarians.

All these words, written so long ago, seemed to say to her, Remember us. We were here. We were real.

Mysterious Words from the Past

It had taken me twenty-five years to reach the point where I could talk openly about Manzanar

everyone who is interesting has a past

History gets written by the winners, he said, and when the crooks win, you get crooked history.

Crockett and James Bowie got what was coming to them," Mom said, "for stealing this land from the Mexicans

If you went back far enough, Uncle Tinsley went on, just about

One of the ways to discover our toughness and resiliency is to look back at where we come from. (from Amazon description)

Unless what?" I ask. "Unless, it's all a plot, Sallie," Mattie says. "Unless it's all been a plot from the beginning. Seymour arranges for the Duke to meet a woman he had a history with. Once the Duke marries her, Seymour just happens to show up and three days later goads the Duke into doing something stupid that gets him killed, then before the Duke's body is cold Seymour marries his widow to get his hands on Eddie's inheritance.