Quotes About History

Accuracy is paramount in every detail of a work of history. Here's my rule: Ask yourself, 'Did this thing happen?' If the answer is yes, then it's historical. Then ask, 'Did this thing happen precisely this way?' If the answer is yes, then it's history; if the answer is no, not precisely this way, then it's historical drama.

I'm from Cleveland. I don't have any famous parents. I don't have any media training, I don't have a history in the industry to where I would have any preconceived notions of how I'm supposed to be.

Hip-hop has had this history where the predecessor just is so harsh and not nice to the next coming generation that it creates this separation and this gap.

One of the banners I would put up in front of any American president and new administration is 'Do not overreact to your predecessors' policies.'

To the brains of our predecessors we owe all of our inheritance of civilization and culture.

We ship owners and our predecessors, all the way back to the dawn of history, operating in majority on private initiative and at our own risk, have been linking the world together much more effectively than governments ever managed to do or will likely ever be capable of doing.

Nothing I'm doing is without its predecessors.

If you look at Shakespeare's history plays, what the setting of monarchy allows is this extraordinary intensification of emotions and predicament.

Being in London has really taught me how important history is. Just having information of the past. It helps you predict the future, which is all we really have as, you know, humans.

If the worst comes true, and the paper book joins the papyrus scroll and parchment codex in extinction, we will miss, I predict, a number of things about it.

I think it's impossible to predict the future but it is possible to look at the past and see how one can do differently from what one's ancestors have done and learn from their mistakes, and one can see how even though there are enormous forces which stop one doing what one wants to, there are little holes in which the individual can do something.

Before they became Americans, most white inhabitants of the 13 colonies considered themselves British. It was predictable, therefore, that they would lust after empire, because this was exactly what their counterparts on the other side of the Atlantic also did.

The Apollo generation wasn't a historical fluke. It was the predictable result of what happens when a free nation actually decides on something and goes for it. We can do it again, do it better, and do it for keeps this time. But we must decide: Will America, as a nation, support the settlement of space?

If you look at the Bible almost everything that was predicted, maybe everything, has come to pass.

I always figured I would live long enough to see a black president. The movies predicted it. Usually, Morgan Freeman.

Years ago, I predicted that Iran would take over Iraq. Iran and Iraq used to fight back and forth.

Russian scorn for liberal democracy has a long history, and a certain kind of Russian disdain for the West is nothing new. As far back as 1920, Lenin declared that parliaments were 'historically obsolete' and predicted that it was just a matter of time before they disappeared.

When I talk about the end of apartheid, I prefer not to claim the honor that I have ended it.

The whole point about historians is that we are really communing with the dead. It's very restful - because you read. There's some sociopathic problem that makes me prefer it to human interaction.

You know, women have a history of just being - we've been told all our lives not to say - in the fifties you couldn't say birth or even be pregnant hardly on television - and then gradually things have changed.

In the summer of 1956, my mother was pregnant with me, which caused my father to confess his fear that I was going to be too much of a burden for him because he had a history of depression.

I have always been fascinated by paleontology and prehistoric people, and I've always thought that one of the most intriguing moments in human history was the birth of artistic imagination. I always loved those cave paintings.

'Extreme Prejudice' is the last of the Mohicans. I don't think we'll ever see a film made like that again.

I don't think that women being seen as inferior is a prejudice based on male hatred of women. When you look at history, it's a prejudice based on simple fact.