Quotes About History

David Stern might be the smartest executive in the history of professional sports. His obsession with the Vagrant Kings is one of the strangest stories.

In addition to unfinished business, some ghosts haunt so that they will be remembered.

The people who are always hankering loudest for some golden yesteryear usually drive new cars.

He leaned about the same way in falling towards Jacqueline, forward, down towards the bottom of the car.

You know why there were only 220 Mexicans at the Alamo? They only had one car.

Horses are in our DNA. We used them way before cars for commuting.

The last person to get across that town in under three hours was yelling "The British are coming! The British are coming!"

We are the first nation in the history of the world to go to the poorhouse in an automobile.

When people think about Michigan, they usually think about cars.

He has a chance to make somebody move over on Mount Rushmore. He's working for his place on the coins and the postage stamps.

I was Europe's last chance.

Your second-hand bookseller is second to none in the worth of the treasures he dispenses.

We stand a chance of getting a president who has probably killed more people before he gets into office than any president in the history of the United States.

If we don't unite, chances are we will go back into slavery.

Over the very long term, history shows that the chances of any business surviving in a manner agreeable to a company's owners are slim at best.

La antigüedad no es lo mismo que el interés histórico —dijo—. De lo contrario, nosotros dos seríamos más interesantes de lo que somos.

He was not trained in conservation - he was, after all, no more than an archaeologist - a digger!

Hojear libros es parte de la tradición de una libreria -le dijo Florence-. Debes dejar que se queden y toquen los libros.

In life as in history the unexpected lies waiting, grinning from around corners. Only with hindsight are we wise about cause and effect.

Argument, of course, is the whole point of history. Disagreement; my word against yours; this evidence against that. If there were such a thing as absolute truth the debate would lose its lustre. I, for one, would no longer be interested. I well remember the moment at which I discovered that history was not a matter of received opinion.

I know quite well why I became a historian.... It was because dissension was frowned upon when I was a child: 'Don't argue, Claudia,' 'Claudia, you must not answer back like that.' Argument, of course, is the whole point of history. Disagreement; my word against yours; this evidence against that. If there were such a thing as absolute truth the debate would lose its lustre. I, for one, would no longer be interested.

When the times are out of joint it is brought uncomfortably home to you that history is true and that unfortunately you are a part of it. One has this tendency to think oneself immune. This is one of the points when the immunity is shown up as fantasy. I'd rather like to go back to fantasising.

We are all of us palimpsests; we carry the past around, it comes surging up whether or not we want it, it is an albatross, and a crutch.

And when you and I talk about history we don't mean what actually happened, do we? The cosmic chaos of everywhere, all time? We mean the tidying up of this into books, the concentration of the benign historical eye upon years and places and persons. History unravels; circumstances, following their natural inclination, prefer to remain ravelled.