Quotes About History

By any measure, Elizebeth was a great heroine of the Second World War. The British knew it. The navy knew it. The FBI knew it. But the American public never did, because Elizebeth wasn't allowed to speak.

Artificial culture is paint. Real culture is patina.

Henry Ford learned of a process for turning wood scraps from the production of Model T's into charcoal briquets. He built a charcoal plant and Ford Charcoal was created (later renamed Kingsford Charcoal). Today, Kingsford is still the leading manufacturer of charcoal in America.

trophy room. "This room is on the site where my grandmother spent her very first night here," Stax said. "That was just a hole hacked out of the hillside. Grandmother didn't even have a bed. She huddled inside all night, listening to monsters howl on the other side of a dirt wall. And look at it

They were always Albanians. You know what that means. Some Catholics, some Orthodox. And some, in time, were Muslims, too. But the first religion of the Albanian, as they say, is Albania.

Lufta nuk ka shumë rëndësi për një njeri. Një shqiptar se ka fare problem. Pyesni grekët.

Great companies [inevitably] develop a rowboat mentality," says Sir Howard Stringer, chairman and CEO of Sony. They are "always looking behind to past successes" with awe and admiration as they row into the future.

We have a history of wanting our leaders to be taller than average. That's probably because in ancient times everyone thought that tall leaders could see farther.

The only true dead are those who have been forgotten.

Rap music is the newspaper of black people.

Religion isn't the cause of wars, it's the excuse.

Circula una etimología popular que asegura que la etimología de «testigo» (y cualquier derivado como «testamento») proviene de la costumbre que tenían los romanos de apretarse los testículos con la mano cuando juraban decir la verdad.

Naturally, I asked him what it'd been like to live through Pinochet's coup and the fall of Allende. Naturally, he regarded me with an expression of utter boredom; then he said: 'Like a Marx Brothers' movie, but with corpses. Unimaginable pandemonium.

En aquel momento tuve por vez primera la intuición falaz de que el pasado no es un lugar estable sino cambiante, permanentemente alterado por el futuro, y de que por tanto nada de lo ya acontecido es irreversible.

La gente olvida más deprisa que nunca, quizá porque los periodistas olvidan más deprisa que nunca. Viven al día. No tienen tiempo de mirar atrás, y por eso no entienden lo que pasa delante, ni siquiera lo que pasa delante de sus narices.

Memory is threatening to replace history in an era saturated with memory. This is bad news. Memory and history are notionally opposites: memory is individual, partial and subjective; history is collective and aspires to be comprehensive and objective. Memory and history are also complementary: history gives sense to memory; memory is a tool, an ingredient, a part of history. But memory is not history.

y sin embargo nos va la vida y se nos va la vida en escoger y rechazar y seleccionar, en trazar una línea que separe esas cosas que son idénticas y haga de nuestra historia una historia única que recordemos y pueda contarse.

la historia está demasiado llena de pequeños abusos y vilezas mayúsculas

L'America non l'attirava, essendo un continente privo di Medioevo e Rinascimento.

ignoramos lo que se fraguó entre la gente que nos precede, y lo más seguro es que lo ignoremos siempre, porque siempre llegamos tarde a la vida de las personas.

Het is de verschrikkelijke kracht van het heden, dat het verleden meer veplettert naarmate het zich er verder van verwijdert, en het bovendien vervalst zonder dat het verleden zijn mond kan opendoen, protesteren, tegenspreken of iets weerleggen

Lo que se da es idéntico a lo que no se da, lo que descartamos o dejamos pasar idéntico a lo que tomamos y asimos, lo que experimentamos idéntico a lo que no probamos, y sin embargo nos va la vida y se nos va la vida en escoger y rechazar y seleccionar, en trazar una línea que separe esas cosas que son idénticas y haga de nuestra historia una histórica única que recordemos y pueda contarse.

La vida no es contable, y resulta extraordinario que los hombres lleven todos los siglos de que tenemos conocimiento dedicados a ello, empeñados en contar lo que no se puede, sea en forma de mito, de poema épico, de crónica, anales, actas, leyenda o cantar de gesta, romances de ciego o corridos, de evangelio, santoral, historia, biografía, novela o elogio fúnebre, de película, de confesiones, memorias, de reportaje, da lo mismo.

We tend to see math and science as a steady state of facts rather than as the accumulated knowledge of linear traditions. As Korzybski put it, we see further because we "stand on the shoulders"5 of the previous generation. The danger of such a position is that we can forget to put our own feet on the ground.