Quotes About History

history is shaped by the belief systems of those who made it.

These yanks into someone's personal past, that's the kind of history I like. Not wars, but who was your grandmother and what did she dream of? Did she walk up stairs to where she lived and what did it smell like and what was she wearing and who were her neighbors?

If you look closely enough, there are bloodstains.

Faith in Jesus is the most important event in the history of a child's life.

Elizabeth George Speare

This is what we are like. Collectively as a species, this is our emotional landscape. I met an old lady once, almost 100 years old, and she told me, There are only two questions that human beings have ever fought over, all through history. How much do you love me? And Who's in charge? Everything else is somehow manageable. But these two questions of love and control undo us all, trip us up and cause war, grief, and suffering.

I always hated hearing old people yammering on like this when I was young. And I do what to assure you: I'm aware that many thing were not better in the 1940s. Underarm deodorants and air-conditioning were woefully inadequate, for instance, so everybody stank like crazy, especially in the summer, and also we had Hitler.

Psychologists suggest that we must reach back at least three generations to look for clues whenever we begin untangling the emotional legacy of any one family's history.

The Hopi Indians thought that the world's religions each contained one spiritual thread, and that these threads are always seeking each other, wanting to join. When all the threads are finally woven together they will form a rope that will pull us out of this dark cycle of history and into the next realm.

library is a beautiful old thing

At no moment in history has a bright young girl with plenty of food and a good constitution perished from too much learning.

All too often, those of us who choose to remain childless are accused of being somehow unwomanly or unnatural or selfish, but history teaches us that there have always been women who went through life without having babies.

The earliest evidence of recognizable human art is forty thousand years old. The earliest evidence of human agriculture, by contrast, is only ten thousand years old. Which means that somewhere in our collective evolutionary story, we decided it was way more important to make attractive, superfluous items than it was to learn how to regularly feed ourselves.

So when modern-day religious conservatives wax nostalgic about how marriage is a sacred tradition that reaches back into history for thousands of uninterrupted years, they are absolutely correct, but in only one respect—only if they happen to be talking about Judaism.

And I do want to assure you: I'm aware that many things were not better in the 1940s. Underarm deodorants and air-conditioning were woefully inadequate, for instance, so everybody stank like crazy, especially in the summer, and also we had Hitler.

There are only two questions that human beings have ever fought over, all through history. How much do you love me? And Who's in charge?

Venice seems like a wonderful city in which to die a slow and alcoholic death, or to lose a loved one, or to lose the murder weapon with which the loved one was lost in the first place.

This is what we are like. Collectively, as a species, this is our emotional landscape. I met an old lady once, almost one hundred years old, and she told me, There are only two questions that human beings have ever fought over, all through history. How much do you love me? And Who's in charge? Everything else is somehow manageable. But these two questions of love and control undo us all, trip us up and cause war, grief and suffering.

I'm aware that many things were not better in the 1940s. Underarm deodorants and air-conditioning were woefully inadequate, for instance, so everybody stank like crazy, especially in the summer, and also we had Hitler.

Ajalugu tunneb ainult kahte küsimust, mis inimesi võitlusse tõukab: Kui siiras on sinu armastus? Ja: Kelle käes on ohjad?. Kõige muuga saab kuidagimoodi hakkama.

Keep in mind that for most of history people just made things, and they didn't make such a big freaking deal out of it.

History has a pulse, they say - but mostly I have never been able to hear it, not even when it is drumming right in my goddamn ears.

Then I walk back over the bridge, through the old Jewish ghetto

word ciao comes from. (If you must know, it's an abbreviation of a phrase used by medieval Venetians as an intimate salutation: Sono il suo schiavo! Meaning: "I am your slave!")