Quotes About History

Y la elección de Lindbergh me había dejado muy claro que el despliegue de lo imprevisto estaba en todas partes. Lo impecablemente imprevisto, que había dado un vuelco erróneo, era lo que en la escuela estudiábamos como "historia", una historia inocua donde todo lo inesperado en su época está registrado en la página como inevitable. El terror de lo imprevisto es lo que oculta la ciencia de la historia, que transforma el desaire en épica.

It was all remarkable. Good-bye, remarkable. Egypt and Greece good-bye, and good-bye, Rome!

You know what he did for a living before the war? Sold champagne. A liquor salesman, Sandy. A fake—a plutocrat and a thief and a fake. Even the 'von' in his name is a fake.

that the Jews were victims before they were conquerors and that they are conquerors only because they are victims.

intenté escribir lo que fue la «historia de mi vida» en los bosques, inmediatamente después de mi fuga del campo de concentración.

Había aprendido lo peor de las lecciones que puede dar la vida: la de que carece de sentido. Y cuando sucede tal cosa, la felicidad nunca vuelve a ser espontánea, sino que es artificial e, incluso entonces, se compra el precio de un obstinado distanciamiento de uno mismo y de su historia.

They lived harmoniously with Arabs for a thousand years. But the white Israelis have taught them that, too—how to hate the Arabs and how to hate themselves. The white Israelis have turned them into their thugs.

But it is Hitler to whom the entire world must be grateful tonight for striking at the Soviet Union.

Stella, think not that I by verse seek fame, Who seek, who hope, who love, who live but thee; Thine eyes my pride, thy lips my history; If thou praise not, all other praise is shame.

In one of history's great ironies, scientists today know vastly more than their colleagues a century ago, and possess vastly more data-crunching power, but they are much less confident in the prospects for perfect predictability.

C. S. Lewis observed that almost all crimes of Christian history have come about when religion is confused with politics. Politics, which always runs by the rules of ungrace, allures us to trade away grace for power, a temptation the church has often been unable to resist.

Be careful," warned Nietzsche, "lest in fighting the dragon you become the dragon." I see the confusion of politics and religion as one of the greatest barriers to grace. C. S. Lewis once said that almost all crimes of Christian history have come about when religion is confused with politics. Politics, which always runs by the rules of ungrace, allures us to trade away grace for power, a temptation the church has often been unable to resist.

Whatever you may believe about it, the birth of Jesus was so important that it split history into two parts. Everything that has ever happened on this planet falls into a category of before Christ or after Christ.

Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we must be saved by love.7-22 REINHOLD NIEBUHR

I see the confusion of politics and religion as one of the greatest barriers to grace. C. S. Lewis once said that almost all crimes of Christian history have come about when religion is confused with politics. Politics, which always runs by the rules of ungrace, allures us to trade away grace for power, a temptation the church has often been unable to resist. Those

If I take Easter as the starting point, the one incontrovertible fact about how God treats those whom he loves, then human history becomes the contradiction and Easter a preview of ultimate reality.

History is a test of faith, and the correct response to that test is persistent prayer.

The first nation to separate Christianity from government produced perhaps the most religious nation on earth.

many such episodes it became clear that religion allied too closely to the state leads to the abuse of power. Christian experiments with church-state blending, whether in Geneva under Calvin or in Spain and Latin America under the Inquisition, may have worked for a time but inevitably provoked a backlash against the church, such as that seen in secular Europe today.*

Edward Gibbon said that in ancient Rome all religions were to the people equally true, to the philosophers equally false, and to the government equally useful.

Though forgiveness is never easy, and may take generations, what else can break the chains that enslave people to their historical past?

The past must be remembered before it can be overcome.

At times, God's history seems to operate on an entirely different plane than ours...Exodus identifies by name the two Hebrew midwives who helped save Moses' life, but it does not bother to record the name of the Pharaoh ruling Egypt (an omission that has baffled scholars ever since).

somehow throughout history the church has managed to gain a reputation for its ungrace. As a little English girl prayed, "O God, make the bad people good, and the good people nice.