Quotes About History

As a certain philosopher of ancient Greece once put it, the difference between the historian and poet/storyteller is that where the historian relates what happened, the storyteller tells us how it might have come about.

There were many bloody period in human history, many of them occurring right here in North America.

In addition, historical interpretations of this period in China have been shaped by Karl Marx's writings on this subject. Despite his anti-imperialist stance, Marx often uses racist expressions, such as "barbarous"and "hereditary stupidity," to describe Chinese culture and people.

Along with the idea of romantic love, she was introduced to another--physical beauty. Probably the most destructive ideas in the history of human thought. Both originated in envy, thrived in insecurity, and ended in disillusion.

It is wholly wrong to blame Marx for what was done in his name, as it is to blame Jesus for what was done in his.

The station records revealed that in the decades following the town's foundation, the blacks had been kept on a tight rein. The log book for the police cells indicated that a week rarely passed without an inmate from the nearby mission being locked up, from a period of twelve hours to several weeks, and for matters including trespassing, drunkenness, absconding and co-habitation with those of a superior caste.

Deane carried the blood of so many Aboriginal people on his hands it could never be scrubbed away, not from the man himself or the town that carried his name.

In retrospect, the Millennium marked only a moment in time. It was the events of September 11 that marked a turning point in history, where we confront the dangers of the future and assess the choices facing humankind.

Those who ignore history are condemned to retweet it.

achieved by the Roman

Sabemos desde hace tiempo que los seres humanos sois brutales —dijo la elfa de los ojos verdes con el ceño fruncido—. En otras épocas, al menos teníais la excusa de la ignorancia.

What are these things that this houses, Eva?" Rovender picked up a crumbling tome. He handed it to her. "These are books," Eva said as the yellowed bits of paper flaked away in her hands to rest on the floor. "It's what humans used to put all of their writing in long ago.

History was not simply a catalogue of the dead and buried and benighted, but rather a vast new world to be pioneered; ...if you approached the past generously, so to speak—its people as humans, not facts, as modern in their time as we were in ours, who thought and felt as we do, the dead would live again, our equals, not our old-fashioned, hopelessly unenlightened, and backward inferiors. Humanity, to be fully known, had to be seen as changeless as well as ever changing.

Everywhere, it seemed, I had to explore two pasts and two presents; one white, one black, separate and unreconcilable. The past had poisoned the present and the present, in turn, now poisoned remembrance of things past.

The past was a consumable, subject to the national preference for familiar products. And history, in America, is a dish best served plain. The first course could include a dollop of Italian in 1492, but not Spanish spice or French sauce or too much Indian corn. Nothing too filling or fancy ahead of the turkey and pumpkin pie, just the way Grandma used to cook it.

I've been here in Richmond for six years and I still don't get it. To me, having the principal Richmond monuments dedicated to the Lost Cause is like saying we're dedicated to no hope, no future. It's like having a monument to unrequited love.

Cook," the historian Bernard Smith speculates, "increasingly realised that wherever he went he was spreading the curses much more liberally than the benefits of European civilization.

Andersonville lay on American soil and saw the death of 13,000 Americans in American custody.

You know what I hate?' she said. 'When people say that history repeats itself. That's the scariest thing I can think of.

The way I see it," King said, "your great-grandfather fought and died because he believed my great-grandfather should stay a slave. I'm supposed to feel all warm inside about that?

One hundred years ago my great-grandfather thought women shouldn't vote. He was absolutely certain about that, and I'm absolute certain he was wrong. Two hundred years ago my great-great-great=great grandfather believed that white men should own black men. He was absolutely certain about that, and I am certain that he was wrong. I'm humble because I don't know what I'm wrong about today. I'll speak with confidence and I'll speak with passion, but I won't speak with certainty.

To our question Who killed Jesus? the answer too often has been The Jews! The unconscionable anti-Semitism and anti-Judaism promulgated by this verse started in the early church and runs through the Crusades and Hitler to white supremacy in our own day.

The historian's task is not to disrupt for the sake of it, but it is to tell what is almost always an uncomfortable story and explain why the discomfort is part of the truth we need to live well and live properly. A well organized society is one in which we know the truth about ourselves collectively, not one in which we tell pleasant lies about ourselves.

Evil, above all evil on the scale practiced by Nazi Germany, can never be satisfactorily remembered. The very enormity of the crime renders all memorialisation incomplete. Its inherent implausibility—the sheer difficulty of conceiving of it in calm retrospect—opens the door to diminution and even denial. Impossible to remember as it truly was, it is inherently vulnerable to being remembered as it wasn't.