Quotes About History

When respect for tradition dies out, society, in its incessant desire to renew itself, consumes itself in a frenzy.

Der Geschichte ist nicht der Ort, wo die Antagonismen sich auflösen, sondern wo sei vergessen werden. Dir irdischen Siege sind nicht optimistische dialektische Synthesen, sondern tragisches empirisches Verschwinden eines der Elemente des vorhergehenden Antagonismus.

Wenn ein Reaktionär von "unvermeidlicher Restauration" spricht, dürfen wir nicht vergessen, dass der Reaktionär Jahrtausenden rechnet.

Everything that interrupts a tradition obliges us to start over. And every origin is bloody .

Democratic massacres belong to the logic of the system. Ancient massacres to the illogicality of man.

Die Aristokraten sind die normalen; die Demokraten die Fehlgeburten der Geschichte.

Love is more pleasant than marriage for the same reason that novels are more amusing than history.

Peut-être les hommes apprendront-ils de leur passé, peut-être disparaitront-ils dans leur quête irraisonnée de pouvoir...

For it is the duty of an astronomer to compose the history of the celestial motions through careful and expert study.

all adventures involving knowledge and imagination. When Marielle drives crosstown from east to west along Sherbrooke Street in her old Plymouth, aka 'Violet,' it is 'a carousel of history and geography,' it is about straddling grammar and going off to explore the inner recesses of the images and life irrigating the brain.

I wondered what he would have thought if he'd known that I'd gleaned most of my information from reading historical romance novels.

There are still some people who think that we have Stalin to thank for all our progress, who quake before Stalin's dirty underdrawers, who stand at attention and salute them.

About the capitalist states, it doesn't depend on you whether or not we exist. If you don't like us, don't accept our invitations, and don't invite us to come and see you. Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you.

Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev

I am totally fascinated by people and our history as I understand and continue to explore it. People have so much to give and so far to go and yet we have given and gone a great distance. It's really just interesting to ask: why not? And see where that takes me.

I always loved English because whatever human beings are, we are storytellers. It is our stories that give a light to the future. When I went to college I became a history major because history is such a wonderful story of who we think we are. English is much more a story of who we really are.

Live in the moment. Moments make history.

I do not think you can name many great inventions that have been made by married men.

The present generation sees everything clearly, marvels at the errors and laughs at the follies of its forefathers, not seeing that there are streaks of heavenly light in that history, that every letter in it cries aloud to them, that on all sides a pointing finger is turned upon it, upon the present generation. But the present generation laughs and proudly, self-confidently, enters upon a series of fresh errors at which their descendants will laugh again in their turn.

Ukrainian was to Gogol "the language of the soul," and it was in Ukrainian songs rather than in old chronicles, of which he was not a little contemptuous, that he read the history of his people.

A person in despair likes to visit the past.

This is an old house. Among the oldest in the area, a white clapboard former farmhouse built in 1748. Fart on the porch and it rattles a floor board in the attic. -Dice (Swoon)

It was a kind of sin, certainly, to forget—but it was not easy to remember, especially when names changed, languages changed. A century-old name held that century; when replaced, a hundred years were wiped out at one stroke. Amnesia set it; reality itself, being metamorphic, was affected.

Don't Let's Be Beastly to the Germans