Quotes About History

I actually completely suck at being a bioethicist. What I do is history of medicine and patient advocacy. Patient advocacy is actually the opposite of bioethics, because bioethicists are the people who increasingly set up and justify the systems we patient advocates have to fight.

Private communication systems have been around since the beginning of human culture.

if Eve had had a spade and known what to do with it, we should not have had all that sad business of the apple.

American bean cookery owes a lot to the Indians who, by the time the European colonists arrived, had been cooking and eating beans for at least 600 years.

Despite — or perhaps because of — its propensity for provoking unbridled lust, people have been cooking asparagus at least since the time of the ancient Greeks and Romans.

Tepary beans, before the advent of the playing card and the poker chip, figured as counters in an ancient Indian gambling game.

Not worth beans" has meant "utterly valueless" since the thirteenth century, which shows that, historically, we haven't had a clue as to the value of beans.

Historically, kale has been a more popular food for livestock than for people, though for both it is notably nutritious

It seems to me, that this, too, is how memory works. What we remember of what was done to us shapes our view, molds us, sets our stance. But what we remember is past, it no longer exists, and yet we hold on to it, live by it, surrender so much control to it. What do we become when we put down the scripts written by history and memory, when each person before us can be seen free of the cultural or personal narrative we've inherited or devised? When we, ourselves, can taste that freedom.

For many of us it seems that to be a feminist in the way that we have seen or understood feminism is to conform to an identity and way of living that doesn't allow for individuality, complexity, or less than perfect personal histories. We fear that the identity will dictate and regulate our lives, instantaneously pitting us against someone, forcing us to choose inflexible and unchanging sides, female against male, black against white, oppressed against oppressor, good against bad.

There is the truth of history, and there is the truth of what a person remembers.

It is sometimes very hard to tell the difference between history and the smell of skunk.

It is a great pity that every human being does not, at an early stage of his life, have to write a historical work. He would then realize that the human race is in quite a jam about truth.

I had come to Yugoslavia to see what history meant in flesh and blood.

It is always dangerous to view our collective lives without the benefit of history or without regard to diversity among us.

The greatest coach in basketball history began his professional career coaching football players at basketball.

They made us many promises, more than I can remember, but they kept only one; they promised to take our land, and they did.

History is important not only as a record of the past but also as a guide to the present. We need to know where we have come from in order to better understand where we are heading.

The priceless artifacts that passed through her hands amazed her. The beauty, the craftsmanship, the history – she sighed. If only she could spend more time alone with the treasures and less time with the pretentious buyers.

Infinito —y no histórico— es Aquiles por su cólera y su amor, independientemente de que haya o no existido; como infinito será Cristo por su impracticable filosofía, regístrelo o no la Historia. Esas metáforas, esas imágenes, pertenecen a la eternidad.

Men make their own history; but they make it under given conditions, and they become entangled thereby in a fate which is in part the result of other men having made their own history earlier.

Looking backward always presents an overdetermined depiction of fate; by this perspective we leave out of focus the possibilities of action which existed at the time.

Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history therefore we must be saved by faith.

Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime therefore, we must be saved by hope. Nothing true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history therefore, we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone therefore, we are saved by love.