Quotes About History

There should be no presumption that any critical juncture will lead to a successful political revolution or to change for the better. History is full of examples of revolutions and radical movements replacing one tyranny with another, in a pattern that the German sociologist Robert Michels dubbed the iron law of oligarchy, a particularly pernicious form of the vicious circle.

It was an age of tragic mistakes.

Gli eventi chiave del passato non possono essere cambiati, ma le persone coinvolte si. Evanna mi aveva detto che se fosse tornata indietro e avesse ucciso Adolf Hitler, l'universo l'avrebbe rimpiazzato con qualcun'altro. Gli eventi fondamentali della seconda guerra mondiale si sarebbero verificati con le stesse modalità, scatenati però da una figura differente. [...] Quindi non potevo modificare il corso della storia intorno a me, ma potevo togliermi di mezzo.

You like Nick a lot, don't you, Nora? Dorothy asked. He's an old Greek fool, but I'm used to him. Charles isn't a Greek name. It's Charalambides, I explained. When the old man came over, the mugg that put him through Ellis Island said Charalambides was too long...too much trouble to write... and whittled it down to Charles. It was all right with the old man; they could have called him X so they let him in.

I suppose you'll see her. You'll be disappointed at first. Then without being able to say how or when it happened, you'll find you've forgotten your disappointment, and the first thing you know you'll be telling her your life's history, and all your troubles and hopes.

Without question, the greatest invention in the history of mankind is beer. Oh, I grant you that the wheel was also a fine invention, but the wheel does not go nearly as well with pizza.

In the words of a very famous dead person, 'A nation that does not know its history is doomed to do poorly on the Scholastic Aptitude Test.

Kakimi chertyami oni viigrali holodnuyu voinu? This translates roughly to: How the hell did these people win the Cold War?

Which, as any American high school student can tell you, was an act that apparently had something to do with stamps.

By the 1800s, animal sacrifice had been largely discredited as a medical procedure; today it is rarely used outside of Miami.

Remember this: however bad you think things are today, however awful you consider our leaders to be, however stupid you think your fellow Americans are, this country has seen worse times, including - to name a few - the Civil War, 9/11, the Great Depression, and six seasons of Jersey Shore . We muddled through those times. We will muddle through these.

In College Bowl action, the University of Miami loses the national championship to Penn State when Vinny Testaverde, after selecting the "History" category, identifies World War II as "a kind of fish.

They had good reason. Cyrus Pembridge was easily the worst captain in British nautical history. He had never bothered to learn even the basics of seamanship, choosing instead to occupy his time consuming vast quantities of rum.

The key thing is managed awareness of your role in the world and history. Think too much and you know you are nothing. Think just enough and you know you are small, but important to some. That's the best you can do.

It was called the Middle Ages, the Dark Ages. If not for the monks, everything the world had ever learned would have been lost. Well, we live in a similar time, when we're losing the vast majority of what we do and see and learn. But it doesn't have to be that way.

Wars] can come in different shapes and guises, but always wars come in increments. I am convinced there are steps, and that once these events are set in motion, they are virtually impossible to reverse. There were other steps in the country's stumble toward war, and I remember these days clearly now. But again, at the time I did not recognize these days as such, not as steps but as days like any others.

Historically, Yemen, when not being invaded or colonized by outside powers, from the Ottomans to the British, was fighting itself.

In her life Josie had heard only one or two people apologize. Wasn't that something? Wouldn't that be significant to future anthropologists? This was a time in history when no one was sorry. Sorry took too much courage, too much strength and faith and rightness to have a place in this cowardly century.

Amid the ruins José spoke passionately about the Incas and their beliefs. He told us they had symbols for time: the serpent for the past, the puma for the present, the condor for the future. On

Coffee became the stimulant of choice for the new nation, bought primarily from the Dutch—thus the moniker "java.

write the past in disappearing ink

Everyone's cavemen ancestors were assholes.

Monumental Hypocrisy The Roman Catholic Church has been the greatest persecutor of both Jews and Christians the world has ever seen, and has martyred far more Christians than even pagan Rome or Islam. She has been exceeded only by Mao and Stalin, but they hardly claimed to be acting in Christ's name. Catholic Rome has no rival among religious institutions in qualifying as the woman who is drunk with the blood of the saints and the martyrs of Jesus.

As already noted, Of eighty popes in a line from the thirteenth century on not one of them disapproved of the theology and apparatus of the Inquisition. On the contrary, one after another added his own cruel touches to the workings of this deadly machine.