Quotes About History

Nobody wants to admit to this, but bad things will keep on happening. Maybe that's because it's all a chain, and a long time ago someone did the first bad thing, and that led someone else to do another bad thing, and so on.

Something still exists as long as there's someone around to remember it.

She breathed deeply of the scent of decaying fiction, disintegrating history, and forgotten verse, and she observed for the first time that a room full of books smelled like dessert: a sweet snack made of figs, vanilla, glue, and cleverness.

Does anyone remember the name of Paul Revere's horse?

they couldn't abide the fact that the country was almost certainly founded by the Celts, who were just a little bit too close to the Irish for comfort.

Salt was so important that Roman soldiers were given extra money to purchase it. This was referred to as a "salarium," from which our word "salary" derives. Soldiers who performed their duties particularly well were said to be worth their salt!

The ancient Greeks did not have a good grasp of genetics.

the prophetic story that is unfolding, it revolves around Israel. Any effort to understand the story of the end times must begin by grasping this simple reality. This is the context of the Bible.

This abnormal cheap energy petroleum age may appear to be a bonanza, but in the long run it has shredded boundaries and proximities that defined economic and social normalcy for centuries. In the continuum of human history, this petroleum age is a mere blip. Cheap energy, on a timeline, is scarcely a speck on the chart. Yet we have the audacity, the irrationality, to plunge forward with building designs, suburban designs, transportation designs as if this cheap

Historians tell us that Talleyrand once told Napoleon, "You can do anything with bayonets, Sire, except sit on them." In the language of the court this meant that obedience to the law ultimately depended on cooperation, not force.

For many years the conviction has grown upon me that civilization arises and unfolds in and as play.

The supersession of the round dance, choral and figure dances by dancing à deux, whether this take the form of gyrating as in the waltz or polka or the slitherings and slidings and even acrobatics of contemporary dancing, is probably to be regarded as a symptom of declining culture. There

You people in all parts of the world, who have passed away over the ages, you did not live only to fertilize the earth with your ashes, so that at the end of time your descendants could become happy through European culture

Throughout civilization and around the world, six foods have provided our primary fuel: barley, corn, millet, potatoes, rice, and wheat.

This society [Jesuits] has been a greater calamity to mankind than the French Revolution, or Napoleon 's despotism or ideology. It has obstructed the progress of reformation and the improvement of the human mind in society much longer and more fatally. { Letter to Thomas Jefferson , November 4, 1816. Adams wrote an anonymous 4 volume work on the destructive history of the Jesuits }

Tacitus appears to have been as great an enthusiast as Petrarch for the revival of the republic and universal empire. He has exerted the vengeance of history upon the emperors, but has veiled the conspiracies against them, and the incorrigible corruption of the people which probably provoked their most atrocious cruelties. Tyranny can scarcely be practised upon a virtuous and wise people.

Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.

Thomas Jefferson still survives

Yesterday the greatest question was decided which ever was debated in America; and a greater perhaps never was, nor will be, decided among men. A resolution was passed without one dissenting colony, 'that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States.

Liberty once lost, is lost forever.

The world has suffered no greater literary loss than the loss of Sappho's poems.

A relationship does not start the day two people meet; it starts in the childhood of each partner. For it is long before they meet that the template of their relationship is established.

Oddly enough, our views were shaped quite a bit by the example of the thirteenth-century Mongol campaigns of conquest. Genghis Khan's "hordes" – often smaller than the armies they faced – benefited immeasurably from what we today call near-real-time reporting on the disposition, composition, and movements of the enemy by their corps of "Arrow Riders," a Pony-Express-like communication system that gave the Khan a consistent winning advantage.

The most trusted and loyal friendships in your life, will always be your oldest and longest friendships.