Quotes About History

I don't adhere to the idea that you don't make moral judgments. I think history is a moral profession. We don't just look back and say, oh, and here is how they slaughtered the innocents, and go move on.

Origin stories matter, for individuals, groups of people, and for nations. They inform our sense of self; telling us what kind of people we believe we are, what kind of nation we believe in. They usually carry, at least, a hope that where we started might hold the key to where we are in the present. We can say, then, that much of the concern with origin stories is about our current needs and desires (usually to feel good about ourselves), not actual history.

Essentially, regardless of the history they have with the decision, they ask themselves, "If I were approaching this decision fresh, would I want to enter into this course of action?

Quand je lis Proust ou Mauriac, je ne crois pas qu'ils évoquent le temps où mon père était enfant. Son cadre à lui c'est le Moyen Âge.

Et rien ne peut faire que ce qui a été vécu dans un monde, celui d'avant 1968, et condamné par les règles de ce monde, puisse changer radicalement de sens dans un autre monde. Cela reste un événement sexuel singulier, dont la honte est insoluble dans la doxa du nouveau siècle.

El hecho de que la forma en la que yo viví la experiencia del aborto, la clandestinidad, forme parte del pasado no me parece un motivo válido para que se siga ocultando.

Le mur de Berlin est tombé. L'Histoire devient à nouveau imprévisible. Tout est venu de l'Est et en particulier de l'URSS, ce pays qui est au-dessus de moi depuis plus d'un an, par le fait du hasard (mais parce que j'écris, je devais fatalement rencontrer l'Europe de l'Est, la Bulgarie, mon premier voyage là-bas).

In the humdrum routine of personal existence, History did not matter. We were simply happy or unhappy, depending on the day. The more immersed we were in work and family, said to be reality, the greater was our sense of unreality.

One week later Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. By then I had lost interest in that sort of thing.

Est-ce que le prince Charles était réel pour moi ? Dîner royal, musique. Je pensais que cette « entente cordiale » du vieux monde serait peut-être un jour balayée par d'autres forces. Je songeais à l'URSS, à la Chine. Peut-être étions-nous semblables hier soir à ces gens de 1913 ou de 1938, dans ces mêmes salons dorés.

I am fascinated by history and particularly the Victorian era.

It is a well-documented fact that pornography as a separate category did not exist until the nine-tenth century, when lawmakers throughout Europe ostensibly sought to protect a predominantly white, middle-class female population from sexually explicit material and - by extension - knowledge of their own sexuality.

The Pilgrim Fathers landed on the shores of America and fell upon their knees. Then they fell upon the aborigines.

Lizzie Borden took an ax And gave her mother forty whacks; When she saw what she had done She gave her father forty-one!

I do believe states' rights was a sound doctrine that got hijacked by some unsavory customers for a while - like, 150 years or so. I'm professionally obliged to believe that knowledge is better than ignorance, but some kinds of forgetting are OK with me.

I taught a master class in film in France, and that was a great experience because I got a chance to study the French film culture and the French film history, so to add... just to expand myself just personally and professionally was really helpful.

Since Sabu was the first guy that I was in the ring with professionally, we have the longest history in my career, and also, we were like minded.

I might be an actor professionally, but as a person I should know what our rituals, religion or our history is. Kumbh Mela really helps you in this.

Among my European ancestors were piano builders, goldsmiths, and vintners but, to the best of my knowledge, no professionals of any kind.

I guess if I weren't an actor, I'd be a history professor.

My grandfather was a French professor in Kolkata, though I never met him.

My mother was a professor of English and History.

The entering class I joined in 1956 included just nine women, up from five in the then second-year class, and only one African American. All professors, in those now-ancient days, were of the same race and sex.

Me and discrimination, me and racial profiling... we go way back. We've got history.