Quotes About History

History is not truth — it records not what occurred but what is remembered.

His Narragansett cousins who protested the Thanksgiving holiday were being silly. Christopher Columbus and the Europeans did not slaughter natives because Europeans were evil — they did so because they were mighty, just as Native Americans had attacked and conquered one another for centuries.

More than amazing. It might actually be the skull of Moses. Wow. Just wow.

Cabal of the Westford Knight: Templars at the Newport Tower

No doubt the Phoenicians had a stone temple to honor Baal as well.

Well, Cam was telling me more about the Ark of the Covenant. Did you know it may have been a power source, some kind of capacitor?

In ancient times only women could do math; men were thought too stupid. That's why the root for the word math is the same as for mother—they both come from the name of the Egyptian goddess, Maat. Mathematics literally means 'mother wisdom.

the most famous obelisk in the world—

Studying the Templars had become like viewing pornography—many did it, few openly.

You don't know where you're going until you know where you've been?

The invention of the mechanical clock was one of a number of major advances that turned Europe from a weak, peripheral, highly vulnerable outpost of Mediterranean civilization into a hegemonic aggressor.

Passionate intimacy between people of the same sex was common in pre—Civil War America. The lack of clear sexual categories (homo-, hetero-, bi-) made same-sex affection unself-conscious and widespread.

In the free, easy social atmosphere of pre–Civil War America, overt displays of affection between people of the same sex were common. Women hugged, kissed, slept with, and proclaimed love for other women. Men did the same with other men.

One of Brown's slaveholding hostages at Harpers Ferry, Lewis Washington, a descendant of the nation's first president

The alphabet was an invention below stairs.

The Phoenician alphabet of 1000 B.C. would become the great-grandmother of our own. About 19 of our letters can be traced back directly—in their shapes, their alphabetical sequence, and, for most, their sounds—to Phoenician counterparts. Ours is not the only descendant. As shown in the "Family Tree of the World's Alphabets" (this page), the Phoenician alphabet has been the source for nearly every subsequent alphabet, past and present.

Our word "Phoenician" comes from ancient Greek. Phoinikes, "red people," was what the Greeks called them, probably in reference to their copper skin color.

Modern experts now believe the alphabet was invented sometime around 2000 B.C. by Semites who dwelled as foreigners in pharaoh's Egypt;

Until the truth about the apartment bombings is known, the true nature of Russia's postcommunist history cannot be established. At the same time, failing to react to the evidence that the bombings were a government-planned mass crime leaves such provocation as a standing temptation for government leaders. If those responsible are not identified and punished, it will be assumed by those fighting for power in Russia that provocations are a legitimate way to win elections.

Anatoly Chubais, who was Yeltsin's campaign manager at the time, said that "of course" there were violations in the campaign, but if the 1996 vote were to be dismissed as a fraud, "then we automatically have to deem both of President Putin's terms illegitimate along with the presidency of Medvedev. … There would be nothing left of Russia's post-Soviet history.

History's lessons are no more enlightening than the wisdom of those who interpret them.

The complexities of national deficits, trade failures, budget gaps, negotiations to end the nuclear arms race, the crises of the Middle East, all these cannot be understood by giving the facts alone. The public needs appropriate historical background and clarification. People who are not taught much geography, history, economics, and physics simply cannot reach reasonable conclusions without help from specialists. This is not elitism, it is something far more important; it is called education.

The commonest mistake in history is underestimating your opponent; it happens at the poker table all the time.

That's why anyone claiming morality is fixed is simply ignorant of world history, or even American history, not to mention the state of the world today.