Quotes About History

Kunta Kinte's strength derives from the knowledge of where he comes from, but it struck me that I don't know where I come from. I understand that my last name is Kirby, that I was born in London, third-generation Jamaican, and at some point along the line, that name was changed. I didn't know my history past my grandparents.

One thing that struck me in my study of history is how people are excluded. I don't mean just racial minorities or women. Pretty much all poor people who don't have documents are excluded from history and its records. People who were illiterate usually didn't leave any primary documents.

One of the things that struck me when I was a kid and I was learning about Pompeii was these figures that were frozen in the moments of their death. It is very powerful imagery, and it is very emotional and very evocative.

I was struck during the Brexit debate by how little discussion there was about the origins of the concept of a united Europe.

The most frightening pages of history are those which reveal how easily conditions making a desert of the human spirit may come into existence, with the oozings away of incentive and kindliness in our natural social structure.

The thing that most attracts me to historical fiction is taking the factual record as far as it is known, using that as scaffolding, and then letting imagination build the structure that fills in those things we can never find out for sure.

He told me that Francis Crick and Jim Watson had solved the structure of DNA, so we decided to go across to Cambridge to see it. This was in April of 1953.

I read a lot of plays as a kid, but I didn't see that many plays, so I feel better-versed in film history and film structure. I just think it's easier to think in pictures.

Jesus of Nazareth was the most famous human being who ever lived on this planet, and he had no infrastructure, and it's never been done. He had no government, no PR guy, no money, no structure. He had nothing, yet he became the most famous human being ever.

Who controls the present controls the past. There's a power structure, if you like, between the present and the past and the future, and that's what I'm interested in.

There's a really fine line between artistic license and artistic licentiousness. And history is a lousy filmmaker. It doesn't give you all the ingredients you need. No story will quite fulfill that three-act structure.

We are a society that has been structured from top to bottom by race. You don't get beyond that by deciding not to talk about it anymore. It will always come back; it will always reassert itself over and over again.

The economy in South Africa was racially structured for many decades, if not centuries.

In Italy, there are so many significant architectural structures in history such as the Pantheon in Rome, or the Duomo.

The form language used by the ancient Egyptians in their structures is minimal.

If you are born in 1564, your dislocation from your parents' experience is very profound. You are the first generation who will have had all your religious experience in English, the first to have a countryman circumnavigate the globe. All the power and economic structures of the world are changing around you.

I'm interested in the balance between big currents in history - the economies, the ideologies, social structures, and so on - and the decisions that people have to make. At the heart of all these great decisions to go to war, there are human beings who have to say, 'Yes, let's do it,' or 'No, we won't do it.'

From Brighton to Bradford, from Suffolk to Somerset, I have explored some remarkable buildings and structures that, in different ways, have helped to shed light on the way modern Britain has developed.

The rugby team is a massive part of the city and generates a real passion but there is also far more to Toulouse. I learned not only to respect the history of the club but also the area and I soon came to appreciate 'buildings and structures.

Personally, one of the greatest sources of inspiration for my work has been architecture. I've had the chance to see so many exquisite structures, whether they are historical monuments or modern commercial premises.

It is idle to say that nations can struggle to outdo each other in building armaments and never use them. History demonstrates the contrary, and we have but to go back to the last war to see the appalling effect of nations competing in great armaments.

I shall always be grateful for this curious love of history, allowing me to spend a lifetime looking back into the past, allowing me to learn from these large figures about the struggle for meaning for life.

It's a struggle but that's why we exist, so that another generation of Lesbians of color will not have to invent themselves, or their history, all over again.

I am often accused of colluding with the British during the freedom struggle. I want to ask, how?