Quotes About History

May 1, 1842. Monday.] A.M. at the Temple. At 10 m[arried] J[oseph] to L[ucy] W[alker]. P.M. at President Josephs . . . I have seen 6 brass plates which were found in Adams county . . . President Joseph has translated a portion and says they contain the history of the person with whom they were found and he was a descendant of Ham through the loins of Pharaoh king of Egypt, and that he received his kingdom from the ruler of heaven and earth.

especially if, as the Scotch would have us believe, there were but a mere handful of people in England until of late years.

Some write a narrative of wars and feats, Of heroes little known, and call the rant A history.

The battle of Okinawa had ended. Over 12,000 Americans and more than 100,000 Japanese were dead. The American flag flew only 350 miles from Japan.

Stalin never forgot or forgave. He once told a Russian writer that Ivan the Terrible had not been ruthless enough because he left too many enemies alive.

Ernst von Paulus,

The trouble with wilderness is that it quietly expresses and reproduces the very values its devotees seek to reject. The flight from history that is very nearly the core of wilderness represents the false hope of an escape from responsibility, the illusion that we can somehow wipe clean the slate of our past.

The special task of environmental historians is to tell stories that carry us back and forth across the boundary between people and nature to reveal just how culturally constructed that boundary is -- and how dependent upon natural systems it remains.

I have always wanted to know why, wherever archaeologists dig, do they always find red and white poles?

The past is now like a charnel-house, where the dead do but bury the dead.

In the past, when Michel had been asked about how the firm would manage without the prolific Felix, he would quote Georges Clemenceau, the French World War I leader: "The cemeteries are full of indispensable men.

the famous remark of Hegel that 'the owl of Minerva takes flight at dusk'"—Hegel's view that wisdom comes only in hindsight.

the Kauravas and the Pandavas turned from demi-gods into cave men, the great war reduced to a tribal feud fought with sticks and stones.

India's transition to colonialism took place under a for-profit corporation, which existed entirely for the purpose of enriching its investors.

of the great cities of the world, only Rome, Istanbul and Cairo can even begin to rival Delhi for the sheer volume and density of historic remains.

but we did not come into India, as they did, at the head of great armies, with the avowed intention of subjugating the country. We crept in as humble barterers, whose existence depended on the bounty and favour of the lieutenants of the kings of Delhi; and the 'generosity' we have shown was but a small acknowledgement of the favours his ancestors had conferred to our race.

Delhi was once a paradise, Where Love held sway and reigned; But its charm lies ravished now And only ruins remain. No

It is recorded that Tipu made all his troops, Hindu and Muslim, take ritual baths in holy rivers 'by the advice of his [Brahmin] augurs' in order to wash away cowardice and make them superior in battle to the Marathas. Tipu also strongly believed in the supernatural powers of holy men, both Hindu and Muslim. As he wrote in 1793 to the Swami of Sringeri: 'You are the Jagatguru

Whatever the accurate figures, the event generated howls of righteous indignation for several generations among the British in India and 150 years later was still being taught in British schools as demonstrative of the essential barbarity of Indians and illustrative of why British rule was supposedly both necessary and justified.

In many ways the East India Company was a model of commercial efficiency: one hundred years into its history, it had only thirty-five permanent employees in its head office. Nevertheless, that skeleton staff executed a corporate coup unparalleled in history: the military conquest, subjugation and plunder of vast tracts of southern Asia.

In many ways the East India Company was a model of commercial efficiency: one hundred years into its history, it had only thirty-five permanent employees in its head office. Nevertheless, that skeleton staff executed a corporate coup unparalleled in history: the military conquest, subjugation and plunder of vast tracts of southern Asia. It almost certainly remains the supreme act of corporate violence in world history.

Instead, anxious to maintain their revenues at a time of low production and high military expenditure, the Company, in one of the greatest failures of corporate responsibility in history, rigorously enforced tax collection and in some cases even increased revenue assessments by 10 per cent.

Not long after his return to England, on 22 November 1774, at the age of only forty-nine, Robert Clive committed suicide in his townhouse in Berkeley Square.

In the 1520s the Spanish had swept away the vast armies of the mighty Aztec Empire in a matter of