Quotes About History

The virus is rewriting our imaginations. What felt impossible has become thinkable. We're getting a different sense of our place in history. We know we're entering a new world, a new era. We seem to be learning our way into a new structure of feeling.

historical analogy is the last refuge of people who can't grasp the current situation

There have been mass delusions larger than this," I said, "following a fanatic leader.

But no matter their metaphysical details, each civilization was part of a world transferring wealth back and forth, back and forth, eventually to the elite groups; these movements of wealth became the driving force of change in human affairs—in other words, of history. Gathered wealth gathered more wealth.

Events would soon be washing by her, the way they did everyone else; history was a wave that moved through time slightly faster than an individual life did, so that even when people had lived only to seventy or eighty, they had been behind the wave by the time they died; and how much more so now.

The Swiss had always slanted against the grain, always pushed against the received wisdom that tended to wash over the rest of Europe in waves of intellectual fashion, everything from details of fashion to participation in world wars.

colonialism had never died, he used to declare, it just changed names and hired local cops.

History is humankind trying to get a grip. Obviously its not easy. But it could go better if you would pay a little more attention to certain details, like for instance your planet.

After all, in the end all the great moments of history have taken place inside people's heads. The moments of change, or the clinamen as the Greeks called it.

Perhaps periodization makes it easier to remember that no matter how massively entrenched the order of things seems in your time, there is no chance at all that they are going to be the same as they are now after a century has passed, or even ten years.

The state monopoly on violence had probably been a good idea while it lasted, but no one could believe it would ever come back.

And with our work," John continued, "we are carving out a new social order and the next step in the human story"—i.e., the latest variant in primate dominance dynamics.

They were somewhere near Chelyabinsk 56, someone said. You don't want to go there, a Russian added. One of Stalin's biggest messes.

It's never pleasant to have one's unquestioning beliefs put in their historical context, as I know from experience, I can assure you.

Those who professed themselves unable to believe in the reality of human progress ought to cheer themselves up, as the students under examination had conceivably been cheered up, by a short study of the Middle Ages. The hydrogen bomb, the South African Government, Chioang Kaidick, Senator McCarthy himself, would then seem a light price to pay for no longer being in the Middle Ages

They made a silly mistake though,' the Professor of History said, and his smile, as Dixon watched, gradually sank beneath the surface of his features at the memory.

Het is nooit prettig om je diepste overtuigingen in hun historische context geplaatst te zien worden.

Det er mit inderligste ønske at du som vordende lærer ikke må undervise i det 4de bud. Du vet naturligvis, at vi er kommet ned i det 20de Århundrede.

I found a bench to myself and began chewing savagely at my lunch. It did me good; it had been a long time since I'd had such a well-balanced meal and I gradually became aware of the same feeling of tired peace which one feels after a long cry. My courage had now returned; it was not enough any longer to write an essay on something so elementary and simple-minded as "Crimes of the Future," which any ass could arrive at, let alone read in history books.

Before you were my enemy, you were my best friend.

Goody Two-shoes Evie Greene got herself pickled, for true. If I'd known you were such a juvenile delinquent, I might've asked for a new history podna. Juvenile delinquent? Hmm. Aren't your initials J.D.? If the shoe fits...

You read about people like you in myths and in the Lore, struggling with their gifts. But it's the struggle that brings greatness. If your powers came easily to you, without incident, you would never appreciate them as you should. And you would no' be a good leader because you would be impatient with others who did have to work hard. It never comes easy to the great warriors in history.

Given the history between the Valkyrie and the Horde, how did you and Helen get together?" His gaunt face taking on a faraway expression, he began casually, "I had her neck in my hands, about to twist her head from her body." "How . . . romantic." One to tell the grandkids.

And exactly how old are you, MacRieve?" "Twelve hundred, give or take." She glanced back at him, as though gauging if he was jesting. When he raised his brows, she said, "Great Hekate, you're a relic. Don't you have a museum exhibit to be in somewhere?