Quotes About History

History is a fable agreed upon.

The stability of species represented the bedrock of natural history.

Even the influenza virus of 1918–1919, having killed up to 50 million people around the world, remained a ghostly cipher, unseen and unidentified at the time.

Another way to comprehend it is this: From the time of our beginning as a species (about 200,000 years ago) until the year 1804, human population rose to a billion; between 1804 and 1927, it rose by another billion; we reached 3 billion in 1960; and each net addition of a billion people, since then, has taken only about thirteen years. In October 2011, we came to the 7-billion mark

So much for where as well as when. AIDS began with a spillover from one chimp to one human, in southeastern Cameroon, no later than 1908 (give or take a margin of error), and grew slowly but inexorably from there.

AIDS began with a spillover from one chimp to one human, in southeastern Cameroon, no later than 1908

More precisely, he placed the most recent common ancestor of DRC60 and ZR59 in the year 1908, give or take a margin of error.

Fred Bailey, a young black runaway, changed his last name to Douglass in honor of Scott's epic poem The Lady of the Lake. The hero of the epic was Lord James of Douglas, who was willing to give up his life to avert a bloody civil war between highlanders and lowlanders. Bailey's black benefactor, Nathan Johnson of New Bedford, Massachusetts, suggested adding an extra s for good measure. Bailey would now be known as Frederick Douglass.

People tend to assume that organic farming and sustainability go hand in hand. But that's not necessarily the case - and it hasn't been for most of history. While going organic has some big advantages, even today most organic farmers still rely on the plow - the chief culprit in the this story. Why? Because it provides cheap, reliable weed suppression." David Montgomery - Growing a Revolution

In many ways, soil degradation set the long-wavelenght pattern of history, as wars, natural disasters, and climate shifts pulled the trigger on environmental guns loaded by soil loss and degradation.

Most of the major events of human history gradually lose their meaning: wars that seemed at the time all

Just before his exile, Solzhenitsyn wrote his "Letter to the Soviet Leaders." "Your dearest wish," he informed them, "is for our state structure and our ideological system never to change, to remain as they are for centuries. But history is not like that. Every system either finds a way to develop or else it collapses." And with that, Solzhenitsyn was gone.

According to Roy Medvedev, Stalin's victims numbered forty million. Solzhenitsyn says the number is far greater—perhaps sixty million. The debate continues even now.

She gave Stalin the letter and asked him to deliver it; for a moment, at least, one of the great murderers of the twentieth century played mailman for a young girl in love.

I think it is a more courageous stance to abandon honestly something which has been devalued by history instead of carrying it to the end in your soul.

forecasts have to be based on the past, and

Depression-era memories. They could easily recall events—and spoke of them in earnest detail—that occurred before electricity, telephones, and interstate highways.

The name Wisconsin is believed by some to be a derivation of the word Wishkonsing, place of the beaver.)

A declaration of our own history of trust is essential in understanding ourselves and in growing in intimacy with our partner.

After Sarajevo, after Srebrenica, we know what "Never again!" means. "Never again'' simply means "Never again'' will Germans kill Jews in Europe in the 1940's. That is all it means.

Since 1945, "never again" has meant, essentially, "Never again will Germans kill Jews in Europe in the 1940s.

Since 1945, 'never again' has meant, essentially, 'Never again will Germans kill Jews in Europe in the 1940s.

The image of Yahweh in S's court history is an image suggestive of J herself, a powerful presence largely in the background, great enough to forgive David his flaws with a constant belovedness, a "lovingkindness"—in Hebrew, the word chesed, which weds love to ethics. David was beloved, loved as no man before him—by Yahweh.

In the end, I think the local legends and traditions tell the true story. Written history reflects the beliefs or opinions or agenda of the writer. Local legends and tradition are more universal, less malleable—as you said, they tell us the beliefs of millions. They are often the most accurate versions of history.