Quotes About History

The past is very useful, but only for what if can teach us about the present. The present is the rich thing. But I am very fond of the past.

It's the reward of the business (historian), to look history in the eye & say, 'I know who you are. You can't fool me.

Imagine, Dracula a pawn in the hands of the infidel. I wasted no time there-I learned everything I could about them, so that I might surpass them all. That was when I vowed to make history, not to be its victim.

To you, perceptive reader, I bequeath my history.

And I grant you that anyone who pokes around in history long enough may well go mad.

The study of history should be our preparation for understanding the present, rather than an escape from it.

El pasado es muy útil, pero sólo cuando puede enseñarnos algo acerca del presente. El presente es lo que cuenta. Pero me gusta mucho el pasado.

I felt sure, glaring at the children as they settled onto the sand with their shovels, that these creatures were never threatened by the grimness of history, either. Then, looking down on their glossy heads, I realized that they were indeed threatened; they were simply unaware of it. We were all vulnerable.

Together we will advance the historian's work beyond anything the world has ever seen. There is no purity like the purity of the sufferings of history. You will have what every historian wants: history will be reality to you. We will wash our minds clean blood.

I like a puzzle, as you know. So does every scholar worth his salt. It's the reward of the business, to look history in the eye and say, 'I know who you are. You can't fool me'.

As a historian, I have learned that, in fact, not everyone who reaches back into history can survive it. And it is not only reaching back that endangers us; sometimes history itself reaches inexorably forward for us with its shadowy claw.

I like a puzzle, as you know. So does every scholar worth his salt. It's the reward of the business, to look history in the eye and say, 'I know who you are. You can't fool me.

Then he said a strange thing, but to himself. `They lived, didn't they?' And I said yes, that when one reads old letters one understands that people in the past really did live, and it is very touching.

The strange thing, you know, is that Stalin openly admired Ivan the Terrible. Two leaders who were willing to crush and kill their own people-to do anything necessary- in order to consolidate their power...Can you imagine a world in which Stalin could live for five hundred years...or perhaps forever?

No I like a puzzle, as you know. So does every scholar worth his salt. It's the reward of the business, to look history in the eye and say, 'I know who you are. You can't fool me.

I had been struck by the excitement of the traveler who looks history in her subtle face.

I grant you that anyone who pokes around in history long enough may well go mad.

We have all, of course, heard the story of the invention of the croissant, the tribute of a Parisian pastry chef to Vienna's victory over the Ottomans. The croissant, of course, represented the crescent moon of the Ottoman flags, a symbol the West devours with coffee to this very day.

This corner of history was as real as the tiled floor under our feet or the wooden tabletop under our fingers. The people to whom it had happened had actually lived and breathed and felt and thought and then died, as we did - as we would.

It's the reward of the business, to look history in the eye and say, 'I know who you are. You can't fool me.

Tan diferente parece la ladera de una colina turca de la pendiente de un prado magiar? Claro que no, pero la diferencia es imposible de borrar del ojo cuando la historia te informa desde la mente.

Sometimes we also find a tendency to view everything that's indigenous as good and anything European-such as Spain-as evil. That view overlooks such historical realities as the Aztec empire's oppressive domination of other indigenous societies and its class system, which privileged priests and the military. That view also forgets Spain was not a typically European nation after 600 years of rule by the Moors, an Arab/Berber people from Africa.

El problema de localizar fotografías confirma la indiferencia ante la presencia de las mujeres en la historia, cosa que se refleja constantemente en los medios, libros, archivos históricos, museos y bibliotecas universitarias. The problem of locating photos often confirms the indifference to women's presence in history, as reflected in the media, books, historical records, museums, university libraries.

It seems nostalgia runs rampant among many Euro-Americans: a nostalgia for the days of unchallenged White Supremacy-both moral and material-when life was simple.