Quotes About History

American imperialism is often traced to the takeover of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Hawaii in 1898.

For two centuries, the South has feared a takeover by blacks or the feds. In Obama, they have both.

Well, I think that California has had a history of always spending more money than it takes in.

Sometimes it takes looking at the past to really be able to move forward and learn from it.

It's an absolute honor to be taking part in the pageant for the Diamond Jubilee. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and will be a moment in history that will always be remembered. I'm really looking forward to being out on the river with friends and family. To mark this historic moment will be extremely special.

The new history is really ancient history newly discovered. Journalists are taking crash courses in the blood-drenched background of Serbs, Croats, Bosnians, North Ossetians, Armenians and Azerbaijanis.

Captain Cook discovered Australia looking for the Terra Incognita. Christopher Columbus thought he was finding India but discovered America. History is full of events that happened because of an imaginary tale.

With no guillotine, 'A Tale of Two Cities' would have been a travel guide.

History is nothing if not an epic tale of missed opportunities.

True stories, autobiographical stories, like some novels, begin long ago, before the acts in the account, before the birth of some of the people in the tale.

The history of the outbreak of war 100 years ago and of the collapse of the fragile balance of power in Europe in the summer of 1914 is a disturbing tale of the failure of the governing elites and the military, but also of diplomacy.

Chicago's history is a classic American tale of reinvention, while its present is buzzy, chic and architecturally stunning.

My grandmother was energetic and fearless - a talented poet and songwriter. She was also interested in chemistry and history and medicine, taking care of the people in her hacienda in Mexico, delivering babies. She could have become anything, but this was the 1930s, and she was forced into an arranged marriage.

Everything starts with fishermen's tales. Everywhere you go the fishermen talk.

There are constant cycles in history. There is loss, but it is always followed by regeneration. The tales of our elders who remember such cycles are very important to us now.

I'm no longer religious, but the Bible fascinates me. Hardly anyone reads it anymore, but it's got everything: it's a book of poetry, it's a book of principle, it's a book of stories, and of myths and of epic tales, a book of histories and a book of fictions, of riddles, fables, parables and allegories.

I'm fascinated with the stories that we tell. Real histories become fantasies and fairy tales, morality tales and fables. There's something interesting and funny and perverse about the way fairytale sometimes passes for history, for truth.

My grandmother was born in 1900, and she would regale me with tales I call 'Little House on the Prairie' tales, but they were tales of segregated and racist America growing up in Alabama and Mississippi, where she came from.

Not all of E. Nesbit's children's books are fantasies, but even the most realistic somehow seem magical. In her holiday world, nobody ever goes to school, though all the kids know their English history, Greek myths, and classic tales of derring-do.

Up to 1870, it was equally said of France and of Italy that they possessed no folk-tales. Yet, within fifteen years from that date, over 1000 tales had been collected in each country.

What the Greeks and Romans considered myths, we consider fairy tales. We can see how very clearly the myths, which emanated from all cultures, had a huge influence on the development of the modern fairy tale.

Folk tales are the most authentic way of understanding a region, its legend and people.

The brothers Grimm were indeed once read by millions of people - quite often the first reading materials given to people in the 1950s were their tales.

I believe in elves and giants. I believe that fairy tales are nothing more than news reports of what once happened.