Quotes About History

To my grandmothers, for tilling the soil in which we grew and for watering our roots with stories of all the old things

I'm grateful to the Federal Writers, whose work was far-reaching, revolutionary, fascinating, and sometimes dangerous. They probed the corners of a hidden America, knowing that even when we have little else, our stories still have value.

Sooner or later, the future always circles back to the past.

E]veryone has history. Just because we're not always happy with what's true doesn't mean we shouldn't know it.

Maybe these are woodpile relatives? People my grandmother doesn't want to acknowledge as part of the family tree? Every clan must have a few of those.

Less than ten thousand Choctaw people actually made it here on the Trail of Tears, and they all married each other way back when, so there you go. We're all family somehow or other.

I tried to make sense of what she'd said. "A Sears house. . . . You know, I think this was a Sears Catalog house. I'd forgotten all about that, but I recall Aunt Ruth talking about Poppy ordering the house, and a railcar delivering it in pieces." "Yes!" Hanna Beth smiled. "I remem

I am transported to the time before the War between the States, a time that is bred into our awareness as Southerners, yet most often lauded as a day of grace and grandeur. Mr. Bass Carter causes me to wonder . . . how different is that history when seen from the fields and the lowly slave cabins?

When we lose our stories, we lose ourselves.

was their job to always hold tight to the past, to tell it to the young'uns.

It's hard to believe that, not so many years ago, orphaned children were little more than chatte

It's history," I pointed out. "I'm trying to impress upon my students that everyone has history. Just because we're not always happy with what's true doesn't mean we shouldn't know it. It's how we learn. It's how we do better in the future. Hopefully, anyway

so many of the things we struggle with as human beings are not unique to our generation. There are lessons to be learned from those who've wandered these paths before us.

Chances are, each one of us can relate to that story in some way. We all care about the human element, the part that's timeless. But we also care about those turning points in history, those social mores that we can't believe were accepted just a generation ago. We want to believe we would never have stood for it ourselves, had we been there.

She looked around the room then, and her eyes got misty, and she said we kids oughta remember there was a time when some folks had it a lot harder than others. I couldn't see how things were so different now.

You need to take a historical perspective. You can't make sweeping statements about anything in the world, and there's never been an ideal time when everything made sense—it's just a question of how you look at the advancing tide and deal with remnants of the old order.

One thing that Chairman Mao did was to end the appalling foot binding of women. That alone justifies the Mao Tse-tung era.

There are exceptional moments in history, which show with clarity ? and often with brutality ? that what happens in or around universities is symptomatic of profound, unresolved troubles in the broader society. Hungary is traversing such a moment.

The study of history is the best medicine for a sick mind.

These secrets came down my own ornately curved and twisting family line. For family stories are never as direct as history books, and therefore they are more true.

Every family has one living patriarch or matriarch, the final arbiter and repository of ancient family history, and Nicole's Aunt Patti was the last woman standing.

family stories are never as direct as history books, and therefore they are more true.

We're not from the same Britain," Geoffrey said. "I don't come from your grandfather's Great Britain. I come from a rat-infested, coal-filled hole in England called Newcastle. My people were all miners, domestics, and dung shovelers.

history is something not to be underestimated, and even if the present was gone, a shared history must be respected