Quotes About History

But precisely because history is not foreordained, we mere mortals must invent it as we go along—and in circumstances, as old Marx rightly pointed out, not entirely of our own making. We shall have to ask the perennial questions again, but be open to different answers.

Finding a homeland is not the same as dwelling in the place where our ancestors once used to live."   —KRZYSZTOF CZYZEWSKI

You don't go to the movies to do historical research, unless it's historical research about the movies.

A handful of works in history have had a direct impact on social policy: one or two works of Dickens, some of Zola, 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' and, in modern drama, Larry Kramer's 'The Normal Heart.'

Accuracy is paramount in every detail of a work of history. Here's my rule: Ask yourself, 'Did this thing happen?' If the answer is yes, then it's historical. Then ask, 'Did this thing happen precisely this way?' If the answer is yes, then it's history if the answer is no, not precisely this way, then it's historical drama.

The general consensus among historians, among the ones who can handle the fact that 'Lincoln' is, in fact, historical fiction, is that we demonstrate enormous fidelity to history and that, beyond that, we've actually contributed a line of thinking about Lincoln's presidency that's somewhat original.

Gay writers now have both a sense of history and the fables that allows them to dwell in the realms of the ridiculous and at the same time talk seriously about things.

What makes the voice pathetic is that it doesn't know what kind of people it's reaching. Us. No one hears it, except us. This Age wanted heroes. It got us instead: carefully constructed, but immobile. Subtle but, unfit to take up the burden of the times. It happens. A whole generation of washouts. History says stand up, and we totter and collapse, weeping, moved, but not sufficient.

It's something you learn after your second theme party: It's all been done before.

Lincoln in his element

Whenever someone implies that history is boring, I bring up Napoleon's penis.

Whenever anyone tells me that history's boring, I bring up Napoleon's penis.

If you think Independence Day is America's defining holiday, think again. Thanksgiving deserves that title, hands-down.

Where economic efficiency gives males a bargaining advantage on account of greater mobility of their human capital from a gendered division of labor, families do best by socializing a daughter to cultivate the femininity that will help her win her a good man and the docility that will help her keep him. Because human history has been agrarian for most of recorded time, these are the values—let's call it patriarchy—most familiar to humanity.

I've got tonnes of aboriginal and Native American art, but I'd like even more.

He who believes that the past cannot be changed has not yet written his memoirs.

Is it true you were born i the eighteen-hundreds?" Sophia yelled through the window. "What of it?" Grandmother answered, very distinctly. "What do you know about the eighteen-hundreds?" "Nothing, and i'm not interested, either," Sophia shouted and ran away.

Allra mest tyckte jag om att få var svinaktig med Hitler og Stalin.

legends to surround it—giving history to what had just

In Viridia, women were oppressed because men were afraid of them. Women had ruled this country. And history had denigrated them. Erased them. Nomi was certain this wasn't what Renzo had been taught. He would have told her. But the Superior knew. Whoever had given her this book knew. And now she did too.

Let us hope that the Arch somehow survives-that it becomes, far in the future, a mysterious structure like the Great Pyramids or Stonehenge, that leads onlookers to wonder about the people who produced it and ask themselves what strange compulsions led to its creation.

You are shifting from … … the past occurring as a series of events that "really happened" and are "the" truth … … to … … the past occurring as a series of interpretations you've made about events that happened, all of which are valid and none of which represent "the" truth.

History, with its hard spine & dog-eared Corners, will be replaced with nuance, Just like the dinosaurs gave way to mounds and mounds of ice.

And it's not the future their eyes see, But history. It stretches Like a dry road uphill before them. They climb it.