Quotes About History

The old Hollywood I knew is dead. It only exists now in still photographs and a few people's memories." — Olivia de Havilland

capitalism is too important and complex a subject to be left to economists. Achieving a critical comprehension of it requires perspectives beyond those characteristic of modern economics. That is why this is a history not of economic ideas, but of ideas beyond the capitalist economy.

It was in the eighteenth century that England became what (Adam) Smith called "a nation of shopkeepers".... (p. 58)

Travel gives me the opportunity to walk through the sectors of cities where one can clearly see the passage of time.

I look back into past history, the stored experiences or products of the imagination. I look no further forward than the evening.

But [Ben Marcus] can't resist the urge to re-enact the great prizefights of the past--Kerouac vs. Capote, Barth vs. Gardner--as if what we really need, in 2005, is two white male writers fighting over something that can't be circumscribed, much less owned. Isn't it time we allowed the scorched-earth rhetoric of avant-gardes and ancien régimes to drift, like the tissue-thin sheets of an old aerogramme, into the dustbin of history?

The old man began to sing. His voice was very lovely and obviously a part of something that the world had disposed of in its haste, evidence of a grander, kinder past.

That's just how it is with history. You do things and later on when people see what you did, it looks bad.

I believe in discovering the love that exists and then trying to understand it. Not to invent a love and try to make it exist, and then to see what it is. I believe in trying to understand love through other loves, other loves that have existed before. Many people have made the records of these loves. These records can be found. They can be read. Some are songs. Some are just photographs. Most are stories.

Yes, they put their babies inside an iron stove full of coals. So, if you see a Russian person doing something crazy, as you sometimes do, remember—they have been doing that shit forever. It's nothing new.

My right and my privilege to stand here before you has been won—won in my lifetime—by the blood and the sweat of the innocent.

For me, Barack Obama's election was a milestone of the most extraordinary kind. On the day he was elected I felt such hope in my heart. I thought we were seeing the beginning of a new era of equal opportunity across race and gender such as America had never known before.

It is a historical error for those who were not there to just refer to August 28th as 'I Have a Dream' speech day. That is a real disservice to those who were there. It was a sad day. It was not a celebration environment.

T]oday some people continue to view themselves as victims because of the historical suffering of their group and because it is easy and comforting to do so. And this renders happiness virtually impossible. First…perceiving yourself as a victim makes you unhappy. Second, it makes you permanently angry, which further guarantees unhappiness. Third, it enables you to avoid confronting whatever it is that is really making you unhappy.

But, in fact, because of so many black peoples' unthinking allegiance to the Democratic Party (which is absolutist on abortion and does not permit serious expressions of pro-life sentiment), black people fail to recognize the clear similarity between their history and the plight of the pre-born today, and are some of the most ardent supporters of abortion on demand.

This was the end of Jewish history as a separate

Learn from history or you're doomed to repeat it.

Until we come clean about our recent history, there's no way to move forward and return to the representative democracy that our forefathers intended America to be.

Archaeologists now feel certain that eastern and southern Africa provide the world's earliest and most continuous record of human evolution. If so, then this history includes what is arguably some of humankind's earliest food production.

Soul food, it would seem, depends on an ineffable quality. It is a combination of nostalgia for and pride in the food of those who came before. In the manner of the Negro spiritual "How I Got Over," soul food looks back at the past and celebrates a genuine taste palate while offering more than a nod to the history of disen-franchisement of blacks in the United States.

roughly the same interior length as the covered wagon that carried Linda's own great-great-great-grandmother across the country more than a century ago.

Every palace needs a foundation, Askeladden. Make sure that yours isn't of human bones.-Hans Peter

This book was made possible by the letter "ø." Also the letter "æ." The first time I saw them, I fell in love and just had to learn the language they belonged to. That language turned out to be Norwegian, with its rich history of folk tales about trolls and polar bears and clever young lads and lasses out to make their fortune. I only hope that I didn't offend my Danish blacksmith forbears by choosing to study Norwegian instead of Danish in college.

Benita held no reverence for anything old or historic. History was horrible, a long, sloppy tail of grief. It swished destructively behind the present, toppling everyone's own personal understanding of the past.