Quotes About History

You think you've uncovered a great mystery. You have no idea. You haven't even scratched the surface of the history of the Empire.

She felt the breath of history on her cheek.

In the ghettos, as in the extermination camps to which they were the antechamber, the résistants embarked on a race against death. To struggle and resist was the only lucid choice, but this most often meant for the fighters no more than choosing the time and manner of their death. Beyond the immediate outcome of the struggle, which most often was inevitable, their combat was for history, for memory

And then there are the events of more recent history, beginning with the victory over apartheid, an analogy particularly popular in conjunction with divestment. 'Just as apartheid was the moral issue' of the late twentieth century, 'climate change is the moral issue of our time', McKibben has said, alluding to suffering in non-white peripheries of the world, and 'the same kind of tactic is what's necessary to face it'.

World War II ended in a battle for a single buildng, Germany's Reichstag...7,000 German troops defending the building...Nearly 5,000 men died in a battle for the building.

Five thousand boys and girls under the age of sixteen were estimated to have fought in the defense of Berlin. Five hundred survived.

Southern Journey: My Return to the Civil Rights Movement.

It is a sad fact that all flesh must die, but there is no reason why one's story, as well as one's soul, should be slighted after the passage. The attraction artists feel for our cemeteries is only partly aesthetic; much of it is gossip, a continual whisper intended for the delighted ear. Marble without a story is just marble. A true monument leans over and murmurs in your ear.

the course of the following decades, as Germans increasingly came to view themselves as potential victims of America's insatiable drive for capitalist growth, prey to all the negative consequences of modernization, they began to identify with North American Indians and their fate.

The lack of understanding by the Germans, but not only the Germans, for Anglo-Saxon traditions and American reality is an old story. —Hannah Arendt

a sense, the history of anti-Americanism in France is perhaps the most interesting in Europe. In contrast to all the other major European countries—Great Britain, Germany, Spain, Italy, even the Austro-Hungarian monarchy75 —France and the United States have never fought a war against each other.

a sense, the history of anti-Americanism in France is perhaps the most interesting in Europe. In contrast to all the other major European countries—Great Britain, Germany, Spain, Italy, even the Austro-Hungarian monarchy75 —France and the United States have never fought a war against each other.76 What is more, the United States was allied with France, officially or otherwise, more often than with any other European country.

Man has, since the Enlightenment, dealt with things he should have ignored.

My favorite literature to read is fairly dry history. I like the framework, and my imagination can do the rest.

Los Angeles Times publisher Harry Chandler used his paper as a megaphone to promote eugenics, and universities such as Yale, Stanford, and Harvard bestowed their academic credibility to the cause.

Progressives, it's true, admirably supported suffrage, ended child labor, and enacted other necessary reforms, but it's also undeniable that many embraced eugenics as a potential cure-all for a host of social ills.

At its best, history nurtures within us humility and gratitude. It encourages respect and empathy. It fosters creativity and stimulates the imagination. It inspires resilience. And it does so by illuminating the simple truth that, whether due to some cosmic fluke or divine providence, it's an absolute miracle that any one of us is alive today, walking around on this tiny sphere surrounded by an ocean of space, and that we are, above everything else, all in this together.

She remained standing in front of me, watching expectantly. I began to wonder if I was supposed to say or do something. I began to feel a little uneasy. There was, after all, a long history in Soho of people being expected to do all kinds of extraordinary things after being handed some money.

As a reviewer once told me, the story of Alexander's tomb without a body is like Hamlet without the Prince…. The rest is silence.

To understand Alexander well, it is necessary to follow his heart more closely than his policies, so I investigate the king's character through the mirror of the lives of his lovers.

gray pennies that had been made out of steel instead of copper during the Second World War.

It takes three years to build a ship; it takes three centuries to build a tradition.

As one southern-born antislavery activist later wrote, it was a "sad satire to call [the] States 'United,'" because in one-half of the country slavery was basic to its way of life while in the other it was fading or already gone. The founding fathers tried to stitch these two nations together with no idea how long the stitching would hold.

To face this fact is to encounter one of the most demanding challenges in thinking about history: explaining how people in the past could have failed to see what seems so clear to us in retrospect. This is an imperative task but also a delicate and exacting one. On one hand, explanation can shade into excuse, on the other hand, passing judgment on the past can be a form of self-congratulation in the present.