Quotes About History

Mercy—or at least a nolle prosequi—may, perhaps, be the most appropriate conclusion to the crime—and the glory—of Robert E. Lee after all.32

A mind devoid of prepossessions is likely to be devoid of all mental furniture. And the historian who thinks that he can clean his mind as he would a slate with a wet sponge, is ignorant of the simplest facts of mental life.

If history were a photograph of the past it would be flat and uninspiring. Happily, it is a painting; and, like all works of art, it fails of the highest truth unless imagination and ideas are mixed with the paints.

Southern women see no point in the hard way. Life is hard enough. So we add a little sugar to the sour. Which is not to suggest Southern women are disingenuous cream puffs. Quite the opposite. When you are born into a history as loaded as the South's, when you carry in your bones the incontrovertible knowledge of man's violence and limitations, daring to stay sweet is about the most radical thing you can do.

This larder of memories, of sex, of life, of family that we had built up, could always be called upon in the leaner times of our relationship... Everything we had built together over twenty years was there to be tapped into, summoned as evidence that we were made to last... I hadn't realized how much I counted on that trick working until the time came when it didn't.

that history almost always repeats itself. And it is almost always written by men.

I'm the solution to a two-hundred-year-old

And, most of all, these women remembered what their mothers and grandmothers had learned from the Romans, the Byzantines, the Turks, and the Mongols: that history almost always repeats itself. And it is almost always written by men.

Caroline knew what this really is... It is a fourteen-day celebration of a time when people like them killed people like me. - Princess Ann

She thought about how silly her History of Art teacher had sounded when she'd waxed poetic about seeing the Mona Lisa (when Kat knew for a fact that the Louvre's original had been replaced with a fake in 1862).

La Historia con mayúscula la escriben siempre los vencedores, pero su versión no tiene por qué ser eterna. Algunos países europeos, como Polonia o Hungría, han sabido integrar el fracaso de sus luchadores por la libertad en el patrimonio de su orgullo nacional, asumiendo que ciertas derrotas, lejos de implicar deshonor, pueden ser más honrosas que muchas victorias.

La Historia con mayúscula desprecia los amores del cuerpo, la carne débil que la distorsiona, la desencaja, la desordena con una saña que no está al alcance de los amores del espíritu, más prestigiosos, sí, pero también mucho más pálidos, y por eso menos decisivos.

Y después el final, el instante en el que había acabado todo, carguen, apunten, fuego, y trece cuerpos desplomándose a la vez en la tierra del cementerio del Este, veintiséis ojos cerrados para siempre, veintiséis brazos y piernas inmóviles, trece gargantas mudas y todavía calientes en la temperatura de sus últimos gritos, vivas a la República que volvía a morir cada mañana en las voces de sus hijos

A veces pienso que el mayor delito del franquismo ha sido ése, secuestrar la memoria de un país enterio, desgajarlo del tiempo, impedir que tu, que eres mi nieta, la hija de mi hijo, puedas creer como cierta mi propia historia...

Inés y la alegría es una obra de ficción inserta en la crónica de un acontecimiento histórico real. Para afrontar su escritura, un formato nuevo para mí, he mantenido ciertas lealtades y me he tomado ciertas libertades.

planeta hace varios milenios. Piénsalo y te darás cuenta de que tengo razón.

La Historia inmortal hace cosas raras cuando se cruza con el amor de los cuerpos mortales

There was an inner sense to the Nazi persecution and extermination of the Jews, for the progressive removal of the Jews meant the conquering of time - of the present in 1933 through their exclusion from German society; of a moral past in 1938 through the elimination of Judaism and the Bible; and ultimately of history, and therefore of the future, in 1941 through the extermination from the face of the earth of all the Jews as the source of all historical evil.

If one had but a single glance to give the world, one should gaze on Istanbul.

Providence conceals itself in the details of human affairs, but becomes unveiled in the generalities of history.

I define sustainable history as a durable progressive trajectory in which the quality of life on this planet or other planets is premised on the guarantee of human dignity for all at all times and under all circumstances.

The kitchen is a laboratory, and everything that happens there has to do with science. It's biology, chemistry, physics. Yes, there's history. Yes, there's artistry. Yes, to all of that. But what happened there, what actually happens to the food is all science.

Culinary tradition is not always based on fact. Sometimes it's based on history, on habits that come out of a time when kitchens were fueled by charcoal.

You know most of the food that Americans hold so dear - things like hamburgers and hot dogs - were road food, but even before they were road food, they were peasant food.