Quotes About History

Forgetting the past is difficult, remembering it is worse.

Forgetting the past is forgetting our roots and our basic structure.

Every family has a story that it tells itself, that it passes on to the children and grandchildren. The story grows over the years, mutates, some parts are sharpened, others dropped, and there is often debate about what really happened. But even with these different sides of the same story, there is still agreement that this is the family story.

Mans greatest fear is to be forgotten, to leave a legacy is to say 'Don't forget me.'

If one looks with a cold eye at the mess man has made of history, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that he has been afflicted by some built-in mental disorder which drives him towards self-destruction

I think history is inextricably linked to identity. If you don't know your history, if you don't know your family, who are you?

Women have served all these centuries as looking glasses possessing the power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size.

A person who does not remember where he came from will never reach his destination.

Archaeology is the peeping Tom of the sciences. It is the sandbox of men who care not where they are going; they merely want to know where everyone else has been.

The whole history of science has been the gradual realization that events do not happen in an arbitrary manner, but that they reflect a certain underlying order, which may or may not be divinely inspired.

While all other sciences have advanced, that of government is at a standstill - little better understood, little better practiced now than three or four thousand years ago.

Those who have known the famous are publicly debriefed of their memories, knowing as their own dusk falls that they will only be remembered for remembering someone else.

You don't need someone to see your future. You need someone who can figure out your past.

Staying in a relationship JUST BECAUSE you have history isn't a good enough excuse, sometimes you are in love with nothing more than a memory of what use to be. Its sad...Many people don't notice how much you love and care for them until you stop.

Life happens once for us, so let's use it beautifully, and make all it's beauties and hardship, a history.

In fact, I think you're a genius, Quinn. And I think I'm a genius for picking you." "Revisionist history. You didn't pick me. I inserted myself into your sordid plan." Lori grinned. "Right again. You are a genius at inserting yourself, Quinn Jennings.

Once upon a time Apache land would have stretched farther than the horizon, through New Mexico almost to Texas, but as white men found gold, silver, turquoise, and copper beneath its surface they carved up the territory like children sneaking to the fridge and slicing off a chocolate cake bit by bit: hoping at first that the loss wouldn't be noticed but ultimately not really caring.

The Jewish historian Hannah Arendt, in her book about the trial of Nazi administrator Adolf Eichmann, observes that in many cases the Nazi camps were run by ordinary bureaucrats: the evil was astonishing in its banality.

Communists liked history very much. It just had to be the right history. They liked to remember it selectively.

Art history is so often about looking at the people who made the art; but I realized at that moment there were also stories to be told about the people who made the things that made the art. My

Chauvet Cave: The Discovery of the World's Oldest Paintings, Jean-Marie Chauvet

The bottom line, as Raul Hilberg put it, was that most people thought that, even if Jews shouldn't be killed, they weren't worth saving.

Collioure from La Tour Vieille.

Our history is written in the bones of our ancestors. They are the keepers of our stories, our traditions, our identity. And when we disturb their resting place, we disturb the very foundation of who we are." (Kneubuhl 44)