Quotes About History

We of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations who participated in the decisions on Vietnam acted according to what we thought were the principles and traditions of this nation. We made our decisions in the light of those values. Yet we were wrong, terribly wrong. We owe it to future generations to explain why.

All the evidence of history suggests that man is indeed a rational animal, but with a near infinite capacity for folly. . . . He draws blueprints for Utopia, but never quite gets it built. In the end he plugs away obstinately with the only building material really ever at hand--his own part comic, part tragic, part cussed, but part glorious nature.

So I conclude that John Kennedy would have eventually gotten out of Vietnam rather than move more deeply in. I express this judgment now because, in light of it, I must explain how and why we—including Lyndon Johnson—who continued in policy-making roles after President Kennedy's death made the decisions leading to the eventual deployment to Vietnam of half a million U.S. combat troops. Why did we do what we did, and what lessons can be learned from our actions?

The past is a foreign country, which maintains its independence with the same fierce determination as any 'Brexiteer'.

8 In a speech at the opening of the European Research Institute in 2001, Tony Blair summarised 'the history of our engagement with Europe' as 'one of opportunities missed in the name of illusions – and Britain suffering as a result'.

Life is one-tenth Here and Now, nine-tenths a history lesson. For most of the time, the Here and Now is neither now nor here.

You will be most readily cured of vanity or presumption by studying the history of music, and by hearing the master pieces which have been produced at different periods.

Having lost our present and our future, we had of necessity to bend all our endeavors to the past, which no one could take from us if only we were vigilant enough.

The United States of America is one of the most studied but least understood nations in the contemporary world.

The word 'unemployment' first appeared in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1888 – a sign of things to come

Instead of causing us to remember the past like the old monuments, the new monuments seem to cause us to forget the future.

When a finished work of 20th century sculpture is placed in an 18th century garden, it is absorbed by the ideal representation of the past, thus reinforcing political and social values that are no longer with us.

With fire and sword the country round Was wasted far and wide, And many a childing mother then, And new-born infant, died. But things like that, you know, must be At every famous victory. They say it was a shocking sight, After the field was won, For many thousand bodies here Lay rotting in the sun; But things like that, you know, must be After a famous victory.

Cut quarrels out of literature, and you will have very little history or drama or fiction or epic poetry left.

[H]istorians have powerful imaginations, which are essential and dangerous.

History, then, is perceived as a rational process, the unfolding of a design, something with a dynamic to be uncovered.

Deep in their rat tendons, rats know history.

War, like human settlement, is a function of geology.

When I stop to fill in the pages of my field book with the day's observations, I like to sit on the rim of one of the biggest tracks, a footprint a yard wide. The lime mud pushed up by the thrust of the hindpaw looks fresh even though it has been frozen in stone for a million centuries. This depression in the limestone is vivid evidence of the enormous power in astro muscles and ligaments and of the great beast's feelings of duty to family and clan.

The public image of dinosaurs is tainted by extinction. It's hard to accept dinosaurs as a success when they are all dead. But the fact of ultimate extinction should not make us overlook the absolutely unsurpassed role dinosaurs played in the history of life.

There are a few much older states in existence, particularly ancient empires and their successor states such as China or Iran.

Thus began what was later termed the Hundred Years' War, which was soon under way from Scotland to the Pyrenees, with repercussions in Germany, Italy and even the Muslim world, as a projected Anglo-French Crusade was abandoned.66 Neither France nor England was prepared for the spiralling demands of this war. Edward

In Bede's account, the "English people" derived their special significance from their conversion. Their Germanic ancestors, who worshipped several deities, such as Woden, were the longest-lasting pagan peoples in the former Roman Empire. Yet during the 200 years following Augustine's arrival they went from being pagan to being Christian. This is because conversion began at the top, with kings, queens and warriors.

England's political history since 1066 was that of a struggle to regain the "ancient constitution" from the Crown, and even from Parliament, which some saw as the voice of Anglo-Saxon liberties, but others as merely another part of the "Norman yoke.