Quotes About History

There is always something sad about the old photographs, it is because we know that people in the photos have gone forever.

Time is so fast that all times are past times! When you look at a photo of the past, you must know that you are already in the album, someone else is looking at your photo! All times are past times!

Time is so fast that even ten years later is already a past!

To be forgotten is not something horrible; not to be remembered ever again is something horrible!

Today's warm houses will be the cold ruins in the very distant future!

We are in the 21st century; what are the kings or the queens doing in this century? They must remain in the past!

We can't remember things from our future; remembering is merely the privilege and the beauty of the past!

We must often visit yesterday to see how lucky or unlucky we are today!

We were once fish! We spent millions of years under the water in silence! That's why now we love talking continuously!

You cannot separate the old furniture from the memories and the memories from the old furniture!

You frantically want to make a mark on the history of humanity? You, King of the Fools! In the very distant future, there shall be no history; there shall remain not even a single trace of anything!

The past is history, the future's a mystery. If you've got a foot in each, you're pissing on today.

Who we're told to be carries the weight of history behind it. We may not like it but we better know it. Who we're told to be is no accident, but rather a purposeful construction of centuries of accumulated fear. Who we're told to be can be deliberately deconstructed.

I was a soldier in WWII. The last couple of months of the war I was actually in combat.

Look at Jewish history. Unrelieved lamenting would be intolerable. So for every ten Jews beating their breasts, God designated one to be crazy and amuse the breast-beaters. By the time I was five I knew I was that one.

Liebkind: Hitler. There was a painter. He could paint an entire apartment in one afternoon. Two coats!

time before history" is because it was an era that came and went without leaving a trace of itself. Since nothing went "wrong, " nobody had any reason to write anything down. It was lived, not recorded.

Forse la pazzia non è l'ebetudine, non è il monologare franto e farneticante dei disperati che si aggirano sui marciapiedi delle stazioni, è la diversità che separa dagli altri, dalle altre, è la speranza, il sogno, quasi la pretesa di avere un destino. Di non essere un ombra senza storia, un fantasma che scivola sul mondo senza lasciare un impronta, e di voler fare qualcosa di importante nella vita.

When she began graduate school, our people [blacks] couldn't attend classes with whites at the University of Arkansas. After much grumbling and dickering, white folks had begun to allow small departments to integrate, class by class.

She [Melba's mother] would tell us the story of the lone black man who was trying to integrate the law school. In the classroom, he was forced to sit confined by a white picket fence erected around his desk and chair.

My mother was one of the first few blacks to integrate the University of Arkansas, graduating in 1954.

Because photos are testimony that someone did live. A reminder of past we may have loved or hated. A piece of our lives.

You list the dead. You tell the stories of the past. You write about the catastrophes and the massacres. What about the living, Finnikin? Who honors them?

These people have history and I crave history. I crave someone knowing me so well that they can tell what I'm thinking.