Quotes About History

Many people know that Shakespeare's dramatic 'canon' was established in 1623 by the publication of the so-called First Folio. That hefty volume contained thirty-six plays.

In a continent but recently settled, many parts of which have as yet little historical or cultural background, the material for this volume has been gathered from a section that was one of the first to be colonized.

The journey and excursions in Mexico which have originated the narrative and remarks contained in this volume were made in the months of March, April, May, and June of 1856, for the most part on horseback.

I do think digital media encourages speed-reading, which can be fine if one is simply seeking information. But a serious novel or work of history or volume of poetry is an experience one should savor, take time over.

Most biographers are apt to be discouraged by the sheer volume of papers left behind by their subject.

It's a very 18th-century thing to have a book broken into several volumes.

The colored man is in the South to stay there. He will not leave it voluntarily and he cannot be driven out. He had no voice in being carried into the South, but he will have a very loud voice in any attempt to put him out.

The Veteran's History Project, a nationwide volunteer effort to collect oral histories from America's war veterans, provides an avenue to do just that. Now in its fifth year, the Project has collected more than 40,000 individual stories.

The visionary, industrious, Christian, and segregated black community of the early- to mid-1960s understood and embraced the importance of a positive self-perception. It was this same recognition that drove millions of young patriotic black men throughout our nation's history to be among the first to volunteer when our nation went to war.

We read of the courageous march south to battle the Confederate Army by the all-black 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry. Unlike their white counterparts, they understood from the beginning that they would be offered no quarter if captured alive.

'Il faut vivre' might almost be the French national motto from 1940 to June 1944, but who is to say ours would have been any different if the Germans had paraded victoriously through London and Generalfeldmarschall Von Runstedt made his headquarters at Claridge's?

The spirits of Havelock Ellis, Magnus Hirschfeld and Richard Freiherr von Krafft-Ebbing waft through the text to lend 'The Third Sex' an air of scientific authority.

I have always had a longing to talk about this Nazi period because my parents' generation wouldn't talk about it after the war at all. From an actor's point of view, it's amazing to play in one year the Nazi Albert Speer and Claus von Stauffenberg.

I know 'Vikings' isn't really based in magic, but it goes back to Old World spirituality and different religions, and a lot of voodoo.

I loved history in my school days, and I have always been a voracious reader. But in India, you end up doing MBA, engineering or medicine.

When they wrote the Constitution, only white male landowners had the right to vote.

My father joined our party because the Democrats in Jim Crow Alabama of 1952 would not register him to vote. The Republicans did.

Our history is that we can very aggressively, if necessary, and openly and democratically discuss our differences. We have a democratic history in which we come together and vote on these things.

For a few thousand years, women had no history. Marriage was our calling, and meekness our virtue. Over the last century, in stuttering succession, we have gained a voice, a vote, a room, a playing field of our own. Decorously or defiantly, we now approach what surely qualifies as the final frontier.

At the Oscars, if you didn't vote for '12 Years a Slave,' you were a racist. You have to be very careful about what you say. I do have particular views and opinions that most of this town doesn't share, but it's not like I'm a fascist or a racist. There's nothing like that in my history.

The American struggle for the vote was much more difficult than the English for the simple reason that it was much more easy.

Think of all that hard work our founding fathers put in - the revolutionizing, the three-fifths compromising, having to write the entire Constitution with a quill - and yet they neglected to include the right to vote.

We live in a nation that spent centuries denying the right to vote to the poor, to women, and to people of color.

For 180 years, we voted in English. That is the true American tradition, and this amendment is true to our heritage, not what has existed unnaturally for the last 20 years.