Quotes About History

The nineteenth century exaggerated the power of the historical method, and assumed as a matter of course that every character should be studied only in its embryonic stage. Thus, for example, "Love" has been studied among the savages and latterly among the morons.

What is remarkable is that Marx, precisely because he agreed with Hegel in rejecting the construction of abstract utopias, became probably the greatest utopian in the history of philosophy

The knowing consciousness is a form of the social consciousness, and should not therefore be viewed in isolation from psychology and human history.

It is 'the work of history', said Marx, 'to discover the various uses of things'.

Let's look at the record.

The world has never seen a more impressive demonstration of the influence of sea power upon its history. Those far distant, storm-beaten ships, upon which the Grand Army never looked, stood between it and the dominion of the world.

The case and death rates of communities which had "strict" closing orders were no better and often worse than elsewhere. However, public health officials had to do something, and closing up theatres, schools, pool halls, and even churches was the style in fall 1918.

Spanish influenza had rounded the globe in four months following its appearance in the United States and fully earned a promotion from epidemic to pandemic. It had infected so many that, for all its mildness, it had doubtlessly killed tens of thousands already. In its next wave it would kill millions.

World War I killed upwards of fifteen millions, wreaked immeasurable physical, social, and psychic damage, and left most of the citizens of the belligerent powers with a deep conviction that war must in some way be prohibited.

Books won't stay banned. They won't burn. Ideas won't go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas. The source of better ideas is wisdom. The surest path to wisdom is a liberal education.

Books won't stay banned. They won't burn. Ideas won't go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only weapon against bad ideas is better ideas.

Only grand theories can illuminate long-term patterns, structures, systemic contradictions and historical shifts that may be difficult to discern, hard to understand or obscured by countless events of fleeting relevance. Yet, it is those patterns and structures that frame the trajectory of the concrete over time; that is, the making of history.

he found all religions uninteresting because, almost without exception, they start from the present and speculate ahead as to what men shall become, instead of looking back and speculating why men have got here as they are.

It's no longer Colonel Norwood's time. The dead must not rise – they undermine everything their dying created. Resurrecting Norwood is an attempt to cancel history. I can't allow that, any more than any other human being would. And so all of this is a challenge to me. I was concerned that it might be a deliberate trap.

The term 'racism' was coined in the 1930s, primarily as a response to the Nazi project of making Germany judenrein, or 'clean of Jews'. The

In understanding the widespread use of skin-lightening creams among black women in South Africa, the USA, the UK, and many other societies, from Brazil and the Philippines to Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, and the Caribbean, the role of white colonialism by the British, Spanish, and Portuguese cannot be underestimated.

Whiteness (and blackness) have been historically created, and it is necessary to understand some key insights into the formation of 'whiteness' and 'blackness',

In the light of the history sketched out above, it should be clear, counterintuitive though it may seem, that 'whiteness' (and 'blackness') is as much achieved as ascribed.

all humans are descended from an original population in Africa.

in the Cheddar Gorge area of Somerset, revealed that these Britons were far from the light-skinned, straight- and fair-haired humans that they had been supposed to be.

The 'racial types' they posited are of relatively recent origin, having been replaced over and over by other types of populations in previous centuries.

Ignored are the secular regimes and processes that have historically been evident in many Muslim-majority countries such as Egypt, Turkey, Morocco, and Tunisia, as well as the secularism evident in second- and third-generation migrants from these countries.

the sins of slavery are given short shrift.

their nineteen-sixties with the flowers in the guns and their summers of love, as if all we'd had was winter, all we'd had was rations. Just very good at keeping quiet, is what we were. We had to be. It was the way. Them with their jet-age.