Quotes About History

Introspection and preserved writings give us far more insight into the ways of past humans than we have into the ways of past dinosaurs. For that reason, I'm optimistic that we can eventually arrive at convincing explanations for these broadest patterns of human history.

Thousands of years ago, humans domesticated every possible large wild mammal species fulfilling all those criteria and worth domesticating, with the result that there have been no valuable additions of domestic animals in recent times, despite the efforts of modern science.

History followed different courses for different peoples because of differences among peoples' environments, not because of biological differences among peoples themselves

In short, Europe's colonization of Africa had nothing to do with differences between European and African peoples themselves, as white racists assume. Rather, it was due to accidents of geography and biogeography—in particular, to the continents' different areas, axes, and suites of wild plant and animal species. That is, the different historical trajectories of Africa and Europe stem ultimately from differences in real estate.

Much of human history has consisted of unequal conflicts between the haves and the have-nots.

With the rise of chiefdoms around 7,500 years ago, people had to learn, for the first time in history, how to encounter strangers regularly without attempting to kill them.

Two types of choices seem to me to have been crucial in tipping the outcomes [of the various societies' histories] towards success or failure: long-term planning and willingness to reconsider core values. On reflection we can also recognize the crucial role of these same two choices for the outcomes of our individual lives.

History as well as life itself is complicated -- neither life nor history is an enterprise for those who seek simplicity and consistency.

It's striking that Native Americans evolved no devastating epidemic diseases to give to Europeans in return for the many devastating epidemic diseases that Indians received from the Old World.

We know from our recent history that English did not come to replace U.S. Indian languages merely because English sounded musical to Indians' ears. Instead, the replacement entailed English-speaking immigrants' killing most Indians by war, murder, and introduced diseases, and the surviving Indians' being pressured into adopting English, the new majority language.

The history of interactions among disparate peoples is what shaped the modern world through conquest, epidemics and genocide. Those collisions created reverberations that have still not died down after many centuries, and that are actively continuing in some of the world's most troubled areas.

The United States has poured more moral energy into improving race relations than into anything else in its history. And yet, in November 2008, race was still the American dilemma. The fact that it was still a dilemma despite so much effort fostered something like a yearning for miracles.

Another Harvard research project concluded bluntly that by 2004, American schools were just as segregated as they were in 1969, the year after Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated.

Many blacks must know that newly arrived Asians are a powerful threat to the theory of white racism. When these nonwhites with little education, who hardly speak English, get ahead through determination and hard work, it undercuts blacks' excuses. Asian successes are galling for another reason. Asians never had black slaves, never supported the KKK or joined lynch mobs. It is hard to persuade Korean grocers to go along with special treatment for blacks in the name of historical redress.

President Abraham Lincoln is likewise falsely portrayed, presumably to salve white consciences and to mollify blacks. He is extolled as the Great Emancipator who wanted to set up the freed slave as the equal of his master. He was certainly opposed to slavery, but he did not want free blacks living in the same society as whites. As President he asked Congress several times to appropriate money to send them to Africa, and even argued for a Constitutional amendment for this purpose.818

I once asked an old Japanese man why Japan decided to team up with Germany during WWII, and do you know what he told me? Well, you would if you speak Japanese, which I don't.

Everything on earth has happened before, nothing is new, but woe to the lovers who fail to discover a fresh blossom in every future kiss.

Macon has such a rich musical history - and the state of Georgia, as well.

Using freedom to excuse foolishness is the highest form of ignorance. Remember, people died for those rights.

It's not quite true that history is written by the winners. It's written by the best publicists on the winning team.

This is how the history of the Invisible War would become distorted; these are the small decisions that erased Elizebeth from the record and later allowed J. Edgar Hoover to take credit for her achievements.

He had always found this a comforting thought, that the age of barbarism was not long past, that if humans failed to be kind it was because they were still children, historically speaking

The British were afraid. They knew they didn't have the money, the people, or the weaponry to sustain a long fight against the Nazis. They needed America to join the war. Their survival as a nation depended on it.

So this is where the CIA began— with J. Edgar Hoover telling the British to go to hell, and the British not appreciating it. This was also when the British began making friendly advances toward Elizebeth Friedman.