Quotes About History

The mufti and his terrorists had achieved their goal: a spectacular capitulation from the British.

What does your friend Abdullah mean, they were here before us? Abraham was here more than four thousand years ago. Thousands of years before Mohammed, who died, if I remember right, in A.D. 632.

Tragically, most of the Jews of Italy have been deported or massacred.

She missed the built environment of New York City. It was only in an urban landscape, amid straight lines and architecture, that she could situate herself in human time and history. She missed people. She missed human intrigue, drama and power struggles. She needed her own species, not to talk to, necessarily, but just to be among, as a bystander in a crowd or an anonymous witness.

But shame is not a pleasant feeling, and some Japanese politicians are always trying to change our children's history textbooks so that these genocides and tortures are not taught to the next generation. By changing our history and our memory, they try to erase all our shame.

In Japan if you say "the war," people know you mean World War II, because that was the last one that Japan fought in. In America it's different. America is constantly fighting wars all over the place, so you have to be more specific.

It was only in an urban landscape, amid straight lines and architecture, that she could situate herself in human time and history.

By changing our history and our memory, they try to erase all our shame.

The past (...) It feels like it exists, but where is it? And if it did exist but doesn't now, then where did it go?

Old Jiko says that nowadays we young Japanese people are heiwaboke.112 I don't know how to translate it, but basically it means that we're spaced out and careless because we don't understand about war. She says we think Japan is a peaceful nation, because we were born after the war ended and peace is all we can remember, and we like it that way, but actually our whole lives are shaped by the war and the past and we should understand that.

If you've ever tried to keep a diary, then you'll know that the problem of trying to write about the past really starts in the present: No matter how fast you write, you're always stuck in the then and you can never catch up to what's happening now ; which means that now is pretty much doomed to extinction.

I thought progress was a good thing." "Well, maybe not if it just keeps piling up more junk and keeps you from fixing stuff from the past.

As he ran through the dense understory, he could read the signs of arboreal intrigue, the drama and power struggles as species vied for control over a patch of sunlight, or giant firs and fungal spores opted to work together for their mutual benefit. He could see time unfolding here, and history, embedded in the whorls and fractal forms of nature, and he would come home, sweating and breathless, and tell her what he'd seen.

The past is weird. I mean, does it really exist? It feels like it exists, but where is it? And if it did exist but doesn't now, then where did it go?

A harder case is when we study about a terrible Japanese atrocity like Manchu. In this case, we Japanese people committed genocide and torture of the Chinese people, and so we learn we must feel great shame to the world.

The United States has lost one-third of its topsoil since colonial times—so much damage in such a short history. Six to seven billion tons of eroded soil, about 85 percent, are directly attributable to livestock grazing and unsustainable methods of farming feed crops for cattle. In 1988, more than 1.5 million acres in Colorado alone were damaged by wind erosion during the worst drought and heat wave since the 1950s.

We're by-products of the mid-twentieth century, Oliver said. Who isn't?

Guns, race, meat, and Manifest Destiny all collided in a single explosion of violent, dehumanized activity.

The past is weird. I mean, does it really exist? It feels like it exists, but where is it? And if it did exist but doesn't know, then where did it go?

For most humans throughout history, "more" wasn't even an option. "Enough" was the goal and was, by definition, enough.

Do not build your homes below this point! Some of the warning stones were more than six centuries old. A few had been shifted by the tsunami, but most had remained safely out of its reach. "They're the voices of our ancestors," said the mayor of a town, destroyed

I just can't imagine somebody else in the White House. I'm sure President Truman is a good man, but even the words feel peculiar in my mouth. A world without President Roosevelt seems like a strange and scary place.

That's what I like so much about old libraries - they smell the way we'd like to imagine the past.

lady," a word she had found out came from the Anglo-Saxon "lafdig," meaning "she who makes the bread.