Quotes About History

For as fashionable as cynicism always was, the truth was that when it came to basic human responsibility, people rose to the challenge. Pretty much always. As many times as Hell had been created, history stood as indisputable proof that the mass of humanity was good. People built more than they burned, created more than they destroyed, not by a little but by a massive surplus. To know it, all you needed to remember was that we had started as chimpanzees—and then look around.

As many times as Hell had been created, history stood as indisputable proof that the mass of humanity was good. People built more than they burned, created more than they destroyed, not by a little but by a massive surplus

In a minor way it was, he suspected, like Machu Picchu, or the Great Pyramid—a place you always forgot you'd never have to yourself. People imagined visiting them alone, climbing the steps in quiet contemplation of the past. They forgot about the stalls selling T-shirts and kebabs, forgot the tour buses of sunburned Americans, forgot velvet ropes and security guards.

To pen a new history, one written in fire. And

For as fashionable as cynicism always was, the truth was that when it came to basic human responsibility, people rose to the challenge. Pretty much always. As many times as Hell had been created, history stood as indisputable proof that the mass of humanity was good. People built more than they burned, created more than they destroyed, not by a little but by a massive surplus. To know

Our daughter is not going to an academy." I MISS MY SON, her sign had read. "Period. I don't care if she's tier one. I don't care if she's the first tier zero in history and can manipulate space-time while shooting lasers from her belly button. She is not going to an academy.

But there was no pressing CTRL+Z on a day, no loading a previous copy.

Even the dead tell stories.

Monsters lurk in every culture's life blood – the history of the world is as much the history of its monsters as its angels, and who is the more fascinating: Elizabeth Bathory and her blood-bathing, or Mother Teresa and her poor? Vlad ?epe? and his impalings, or Saint Francis and his birds? I wish I could give you better answers, I really do, but monsters throng about us; they always have.

So we spent our undergraduate years awash in Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse and Middle English, living with Beowulf and Sir Gawain, ... and we were required to pay hardly any attention to the 19th-century novel, and not much to the 18th. As for the 20th century, it might have never arrived. As a friend of mine said, 'They taught us to believe in dragons.

The dregs of Romulus.

O tempora! O mores! [Oh the times! The customs!]

The best interpreter of the law is custom.

Rome, fortunately natal 'neath my consulship!

There were poets before Homer.

Not to know the events which happened before one was born, that is to remain always a boy.

Not to know what has been transacted in former times is to be always a child. If no use is made of the labors of past ages, the world must remain always in the infancy of knowledge.

To be ignorant of what happened before you were born is to be ever a child. For what is man's lifetime unless the memory of past events is woven with those of earlier times

To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. For what is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?

Not to know what has been transacted in former times is to be always a child. If no use is made of the labours of past ages, the world must remain always in the infancy of knowledge.

For books are more than books, they are the life, the very heart and core of ages past, the reason why men worked and died, the essence and quintessence of their lives.

Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value.

Pour qui est né après la seconde guerre mondiale, ces événements vieux d'un demi-siècle sont comme des histoires de loups-garous. Cependant le message par lequel s'achève le compte-rendu de ces événements, et qui ne devait être que symbolique, est devenu d'actualité. (postface, 1993)

The only time I have ever seen my father cry in my whole life was the day he watched JFK's funeral procession on television.