Quotes About History

History is composed of the smallest, often undetected mistakes.

The past is everlasting.

the history of a city was like the history of a family—there is closeness, and even affection, but death eventually separates everyone from each other. It is only the vividness of memory that keeps the dead alive forever;

You shouldn't guess about someone's past; if you don't see any evidence of it, a person's past remains unknown to you.)

it is history that holds you accountable, and I've already expressed my opinion that Americans are not big on history. How many of them even remember their own, recent history? Was twenty years ago so long ago for Americans?

the public entertainment of any period distinguishing the period as clearly as its so-called politics

Everyone has a history, Jack.

We would note that ruins don't change a lot: what capacity for change is in a ruin has usually been exhausted in the considerable process of change undergone in order for the ruin to become a ruin. Once becoming a ruin, a ruin stays pretty much the same.

But Americans are not great historians, and so, for years—educated by my neighbor—I thought that sagamore was an Indian word for lake.

Quite understandably, as a Jew, Noah felt that German was the language of his people's executioners and he refused to learn a word of it.)

Annileen said you were riding in from the east, the other day. I don't guess you've ever heard of the Lars family?" Ben cleared his throat. "The Lars, you say?

We was at Sharpsburg. Charlie still is.

emancipation

Few Allied generals can have hated each other more than Patton and Montgomery.

Gaul was, to quote Caesar's famous opening line 'divided in three parts'

In little over a month, a handful of poorly armed and largely untrained men had brought one of the greatest royal houses of Europe to its knees.

Of the early history of Romanus Lecapenus – or, as we must now call him, the Emperor Romanus I – all too little has come down to us. His father, known universally to contemporaries as Theophylact the Unbearable, was an Armenian peasant

Uruk retained a certain importance, but it never recovered its former political power. Its ruins now lie isolated in the deserts of Iraq.

We incline to see history through the lives of great men. That inclination blinds us to the real complexity …

Why should I care about posterity? What has posterity ever done for me?           attributed to GROUCHO MARX, but also credited to various eighteenth-century English figures

in his farewell address, Greenspan did warn that 'History has not dealt kindly with the aftermath of protracted periods of low risk premiums'.17 In that, he was certainly correct.

Hence, pageant history! hence, gilded cheat! Swart planet in the universe of deeds!

I would very much like to know what the Founding Fathers would say if they could see these children being debauched to further the cause of Clearasil. However, I always suspected that democracy would come to this . . . "A firm rule must be imposed upon our nation before it destroys itself. The United States needs some theology and geometry, some taste and decency. I suspect that we are teetering on the edge of the abyss.

Oh, New Orleans is such freedom.