Quotes About History

For us, the events which took place between 1500 and 1800 on the soil of Western Europe constitute the most important third of "world" history; for the Chinese historian, on the contrary, who looks back on and judges by 4000 years of Chinese history, those centuries generally are a brief and unimportant episode, infinitely less significant than the centuries of the Han dynasty (206 B.C. to 220 A.D.), which in his "world" history are epoch-making.

Man is an element of all-living nature that rises in rebellion against nature. He will pay for this defiance with his life. Through this act of defiance, man distinguishes himself from all other living things, which as pure nature are blended into the tapestry of the natural universe. Mankind is the hero of this tragedy, world history the final act of the tragedy itself.

The Classical died, as we shall die, but it died unknowing. It believed in an eternal Being and to the last it lived its days with frank satisfaction, each day spent as a gift of the gods. But we know our history.

Instead he adopts the position taken by Nietzsche in regard to the spectacle of history: it lacks intrinsic meaning, and the gods are indifferent to the fate of man, forcing him to seek to overcome them and in the end replace them with the image of himself. According

Is there a logic of history? Is there, beyond all the casual and incalculable elements of the separate events, something that we may call a metaphysical structure of historic humanity, something that is essentially independent of the outward forms — social, spiritual and political — which we see so clearly?

In other words: what we call history is the specific form in which the cycles of nature are acted out in man-made form. A quote from Goethe comes to mind as particularly illustrative: 'Colour is a law of nature in relation with the sense of sight.'[2] By analogy we might say with Spengler that culture is a law of nature in relation with human minds (the plural is an important qualification here).

A boundless mass of human Being, flowing in a stream without banks; up-stream, a dark past wherein our time-sense loses all powers of definition and restless or uneasy fancy conjures up geological periods to hide away an eternally unsolvable riddle; down-stream, a future even so dark and timeless –– such is the groundwork of the Faustian picture of human history.

The man makes History, the woman is History.

Nature is to be handeled scientifically, History poetically. Everything else is an impure solution.

Diodor relateaza istoria unui faraon detronat care a locuit la Roma, intr-un apartament sordid de la un etaj situat undeva foarte sus, intr-o cladire oarecare.

Das Fräulein Scuderi? Bei meiner Seele! In diesem Wort weht 'was von ihrem Atem. Und kommt's von ihr, dann hat dies kleine Lied Eine Geschichte, die mich intressiert.

The great questions of the time are not decided by speeches and majority decisions—that was the error of 1848 and 1849—but by iron and blood.

The great genius does not let his work be determined by the concrete finite conditions that surround him, whilst it is from these that the work of the statesman takes its direction and its termination. … It is the genius in reality and not the other who is the creator of history, for it is only the genius who is outside and unconditioned by history.

I do not wish to be a coward like the father of mankind and throw the blame upon a woman.

Now there are fields of corn where Troy once was.

There is no surer or more illuminating way of reading a man's character, and perhaps a little of his past history, than by observing the contexts in which he prefers to use certain words.

The record of rocks is a script containing stored memories of earth's past.

Only in 1795 did the Royal Navy heed decades of advice and begin enforcing the consumption of lime juice on its ships (giving rise to the term "limey").

A female magician named Catherine Trianon, who lived together 'as man and wife' with another cunning-woman, was described as having more learning 'in the tip of her finger' than others acquired in a lifetime. When her house was searched in 1680 twenty-five manuscript volumes on the occult sciences were found.

it's appalling to remember that the entire Oxford University Library was sold for scrap in the mid-1500s. Nor was that situation unique to Oxford, as libraries were deconstructed throughout the land.

Perhaps the Irish are so rich in the voice because twas the only thing the English could not take from them. It is why the Welsh sing.

Yuengling's

I'm telling you, the ingenuity of alcoholics is something else. If only it could be put to some kind of good use. I mean, if you said to an alcoholic, 'Look, the only way for you to get another drink is to cure cancer,' the disease would be history in five seconds.

History belongs to the victors, legends to the people, fantasy to literature. Only death is certain.