Quotes About History

Nothing is more dead and dated than the book which once caused controversy.

No pedía ya la libertad, sino la memoria

Todos somos como somos porque hemos sido algo antes

Y así transcurría el tiempo, en aquellos días finales de un Siglo de las Luces que parecía haber durado más de trescientos años, por las tantas y tantas cosas que en él habían acontecido.

Le ragioni sono dimenticati.

Quello che dovremmo capire è che noi siamo tutta la storia, non solo quel personaggio.

se convierte en historia aquello que los humanos no saben que piensan hasta que no logran producirlo para sí mismos, sintetizarlo y nombrarlo en forma de acontecimiento histórico.

Non ha mura, Timbuktu, perché da sempre pensano, laggiù, che la sua bellezza, da sola, fermerebbe qualsiasi nemico.

Lo que saca a la historia de sí misma, trayéndola así al mundo, es el acto de contarla. Que, sin embargo

We cannot look at history and expect our contemporary perceptions to apply. His-story is a male sport, the story of men, as told by men through the ages. Women figure in it simply to patch the silent phrases. But there is an uncanny resemblance between rituals of forgotten history and the reign of the feminine unconscious.

What is clear from railroad history is that if government is to mix with private enterprise, something unavoidable in most instances, then it should do so in ways that serve its citizens, and that mission should come first.

your fortune looks like the pyramids. When someone would want to tear them, he wouldn't dare to, and when he dares to, he couldn't do it.

Comience a llevar un diario: un registro de todas sus operaciones, con las razones para entrar y salir de éstas. Busque patrones repetitivos de éxito y de fracaso. Aquellos que no pueden recordar el pasado están condenados a repetirlo. El

There was far too much interest in the past, she thought. People were forever digging up events that had taken place a long time ago. And what was the point in doing this if the effect was merely to poison the present?

Distant wrongs, she thought: an interesting issue in moral philosophy. Do past wrongs seem less wrong to us simply because they are less vivid?

Charming people, when not actively shooting one another, a friend had once said, which was so unkind, but, like so many unkind comments, had a grain of truth in it. They did shoot one another and had been doing so for centuries. They did bicker over and brood on long-dead history--or history that should be long dead. The problem with history was that it refused to lie down and die.

Human history seems to me to be one long story of people sweeping down—or up, I suppose—replacing other people in the process.

French philosophers had been able to admire Mao and his works because they did not have to live in China at the time.

Places had echoes- and if one were sensitive, one might just pick up some resonance from the past, some feeling for what had happened.

There was the Queen, and then there was Seretse Khama and our own people. That is called history, you see." "But who asked them here?" The aunt shook her head. "There are some guests who do not knock." "That is very rude." "Yes," said the aunt.

We forget, she thought. We think that we were always the way we are now, but we were not. —

the past has a much bigger shadow than people believe. It's still with us in so many ways. At our side all the time, whispering into our ear.

There were three chairs on the verandah—comfortable old wooden chairs that probably dated from Protectorate days. "The British brought chairs," Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni once said. "They took chairs with them wherever they went in the world. And they left the chairs behind when they went home.

You can't condemn the present for the wrongs of the past.