Quotes About History

Big History is the story of how you and I came to be.

That illustrates my rule of thumb for reading history: View with suspicion any anecdote that makes a good enough story to have survived on its literary merits.

Centuries pass when nothing happens, and then in a few short years events of such tremendous importance take place that the world is never the same again .... Now's the time to be alive-- to see it happen, to be a part of it. That makes the blood race, and each breath is an adventure.

Centuries pass when nothing happens, and then in a few short years events of such tremendous importance take place that the world is never the same again.

rich understanding of human psychology, a reasonable appreciation of financial theory, a deep awareness of history, and a broad exposure to current events all contribute to development of well-informed portfolio strategies.

That as people age, accumulate more and more private experiences, their sense of history tightens, narrows, becomes more personal? So that to the extent that they remember events of social importance, they remember only for example 'where they were' when such-and-such occurred. Et cetera et cetera. Objective events and data become naturally more and more subjectively colored.

In a nation whose great informing myth is that it has no great informing myth, familiarity equaled timelessness

Johnny Gentle, the first U.S. President ever to swing his microphone around by the cord during his Inauguration speech.

about how she had seemingly overnight suffered a sudden and anomalous gigantism in her right breast, which she referred to as a titty; she had an almost parodic Québecois accent and described the 'titty's' presenting history and possible diagnoses for almost twenty minutes before I was rolled away.

Baby Pictures of Famous Dictators.

But my kind reader will please to remember that this history has 'Vanity Fair' for a title, and that Vanity Fair is a very vain, wicked, foolish place, full of all sorts of humbugs and falsenesses and pretensions.

think of the condition of Europe for twenty years before, where people were fighting, not by thousands, but by millions; each one of whom as he struck his enemy wounded horribly some other innocent heart far away.

To those great geniuses now in petticoats, who shall write novels for the beloved reader's children, these men and things will be as much legend and history as Nineveh, or Coeur de Lion, or Jack Sheppard.

Todo ser nuevo que encontramos viene de otro relato y es el puente que une dos leyendas y dos mundos.

No es mi intención contar de nuevo lo que tanto se ha contado, pero no callaré que 167 españoles y un griego, armados de cañones de Augsburgo y de arcabuces de Ulm, de espadas toledanas y de dagas, vestidos de acero como sus caballos y atrincherados en la deslealtad y en el trueno, sacrificaron a siete mil incas que avanzaban cantando, vestidos en su honor con lujosos trajes ceremoniales, y los masacraron en una sola tarde en la llanura sangrienta.

Los negros han sido el principal instrumento, carne de flecha en las batallas, suelo para caminar sobre las ciénagas, paño del sudor y punta de lanza de las expediciones más riesgosas, alimentos de tigres y caimanes en las exploraciones a lo desconocido

William R. Forstchen

For every person who died in the westward migration prior to the Civil War from Native Americans attacking, the stuff of American legends, thousands, maybe tens of thousands died from water holes polluted by cholera and typhoid … but that doesn't make for a good movie.

In 2 Macc. 2:14-15 it is stated that, after the devastating war waged against the Jews by Antiochus IV (called Epiphanes) of Syria, Judas Maccabaeus, who led a Jewish revolt against the Syrians, collected together all the books scattered in the war. This activity, about 164 B.C., probably had a decisive role in the canonization of the Hebrew Bible, including an official listing of its canonical books.

What's past is prologue.

The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones.

They are the books, the arts, the academes, That show, contain and nourish all the world.

How many ages hence Shall this our lofty scene be acted over, In states unborn and accents yet unknown!

What seest thou else In the dark backward and abysm of time?