Quotes About History

Historia (Inquiry); so that the actions of of people will not fade with time.

What the History is really about lies behind this: man, giant-sized, seen against the background of the entire world, universalized in his conflict with destiny, the gods, and the cosmic order. The medium that is most fertile in showing the true nature of reality is the human mind, remembering, reflective, and fertile most of all when its memory and reflection are put at the service of its dreaming and fantastic side.

I mean it, it's another gap in your education. Until you can learn to understand her, you'll get nowhere as a detective. She's everybody's conscience, Bob—the universal maiden aunt, cousin or sister. Humanity's backbone. Throughout history, she's gone to the stake for you again and again; not with any sense of heroism, but as a matter of principle and because it would never occur to her to do anything else.

He left not knowing where he was going, he got there not knowing where he was, and he came back not knowing where he had been. But history books will point out Columbus as the person who made the Americas available for exploitation. I guess I can make the same kind of ridiculous claim.

Little treasures have a sign that says, Here I am. Bigger treasures have a sign that says, Do you remember. But the most precious treasures of all will have a sign saying, I was there.

And I wish that I were not any part of the fifth generation of men, but had died before it came, or been born afterward. For here now is the age of iron.

I was born in the '60s and grew up in the '70s - not exactly the best decade for food in British history. It was horrendous. It was a time when, as a nation, we excelled in art and music and acting and photography and fashion - all creative skills... all apart from cooking.

Posterity is as likely to be wrong as anybody else.

That's why you must go. Why you must study many things. So you can tell them, tell the people who have forgotten everything, that for better or worse, humankind has created all of these things.

In vino Veritas. In Aqua satietas. In... What is the Latin for Tea? What! Is there no Latin word for Tea? Upon my soul, if I had known that I would have let the vulgar stuff alone.

The Church is a perpetually defeated thing that always outlives her conquerers.

He knows different now. It's the living that chase the dead. The long bones and skulls are tumbled from their shrouds, and words like stones thrust into their rattling mouths: we edit their writings, we rewrite their lives. Thomas More had spread the rumor that Little Bilney, chained to the stake, had recanted as the fire was set. It wasn't enough for him to take Bilney's life away; he had to take his death too.

It was not by a serpent, but by paper and ink that evil came into the world.

It's the living that turn and chase the dead. The long bones and skulls are tumbled from their shrouds, and words like stones thrust into their rattling mouths: we edit their writings, we rewrite their lives.

is a prince even human? If you add him up, does the total make a man? He is made of shards and broken fragments of the past, of prophecies and of the dreams of his ancestral line. The tides of history break inside him, their current threatens to carry him away. His blood is not his own, but ancient blood.

Feminism hasn't failed, it's just never been tried.

Account books form a narrative as engaging as any tale of sea monsters or cannibals.

The English will never be forgiven for the talent for destruction they have always displayed when they get off their own island.

It's always the wrong bits of the past people want back.

I said to my mother, Henry VII is interesting. No he's not, my mother said.

There cannot be new things in England. There can be old things freshly presented or new things that pretend to be old.

They say Cain invented cities. And if it was not he, it was someone else fond of murder.

A lie is no less a lie because it is a thousand years old. Your undivided church has liked nothing better than persecuting its own members, burning them and hacking them apart when they stood by their own conscience, slashing their bellies open and feeding their guts to dogs.

For hundreds of years the monks have held the pen, and what they have written is what we take to be our history, but I do not believe it really is. I believe they have suppressed the history they don't like, and written one that is favourable to Rome.' Henry