Quotes About History

Imagine if all those kings and dukes hadn't commissioned those crazy cathedrals, paintings and music... we'd still be living in sticks and mud. Because none of those things made any economic sense. Human beings' capacity to 'waste time' is a miracle - but that's exactly what art is for.

If the past cannot teach the present and the father cannot teach the son, then history need not have bothered to go on, and the world has wasted a great deal of time.

Nothing except time is wasted in Italy.

I don't see why a book shouldn't be intellectually sound, entertaining, and fun to read. Historians who write academic history, which is unreadable, are basically wasting their time.

You will be judged in years to come by how you responded to genocide on your watch.

When reality television really hit, I just had a backlash towards reality. It seemed like a cheap way to make a product. And then when music reality and 'Idol hit,' I just didn't watch it, it seemed novelty. And of course the story of 'Idol,' this is one of the greatest stories in television history.

I'm not a Johnny-come-lately Jew. I've been around. I watch out for the Jews; I watch out for the Catholics.

My husband is from Hawaii and his father who was also born in Hawaii was a teenager when Pearl Harbor happened, right before church and he ran up and got on the roof of his grandfather's house and watched the planes go over.

As anyone who has watched Time Team will know, the context is all in archaeology.

As a boy I stood at the doorway of our hiding place in Budapest and watched Russian troops fight house by house to liberate the city and therefore rescue us from certain death.

My mother never watched me train in Romania. She wasn't allowed, it just wasn't done back then. My training was paid for by the government. My parents were not at the Olympics with me, either. I never expected them to be.

I was there during the first elections in South Africa. I watched them take down the apartheid flag and raise the new flag.

My favourite series of all time has been 'Band of Brothers.' That was amazing; I've watched that so many times.

I watched the Juventus of Ciro Ferrara and Paolo Montero, even going back to Claudio Gentile and Gaetano Scirea.

I watched Sean Penn, you know, bring Harvey Milk to life. I was on the set every day.

Ever since I watched 'Roots,' I've dreamed of tracing my African ancestry and helping other people do the same.

The soles of Neil Armstrong's boots on the moon made permanent impressions on our souls and in our national psyche. Ann and I watched those steps together on her parent's sofa. Like all Americans we went to bed that night knowing we lived in the greatest country in the history of the world. God bless Neil Armstrong.

I'm so proud of myself. I thought, 'I've got to learn about American history.' I literally took two months off and watched every documentary known to man. I really didn't know Benjamin Franklin was so cool.

For years, the place I really lived - the world I watched, the one I thought and wrote about - was 15th-century France.

For a long time, I lived in West Hollywood and watched young gay men strolling through life having no idea what came before. They didn't know about the riots at Stonewall, the vice squad, the raids.

My only market analysis was to look around and see that, in one way or another, most watches are inspired by watches that were made in the 18th and 19th centuries. If I wanted a watch like that, I'd much rather buy the real thing at auction than a replica.

Man watches his history on the screen with apathy and an occasional passing flicker of horror or indignation.

Sean Spicer gives press briefings like someone is going through his browser history while he watches.

I don't watch my old films. It's over and done with. I'm proud of my films, but who watches their movies after 20 years?