Quotes About History

Names, once they are in common use, quickly become mere sounds, their etymology being buried, like so many of the earth's marvels, beneath the dust of habit.

Maybe this is what human history was: the brief illusion of happy victories set in a long continuum of bitter, disillusioning defeats.

A few seconds later, my father broke his big toe; but his accident was a mere trifle when set beside what had befallen me in that benighted moment, because thanks to the occult tyrannies of those blandly saluting clocks I had been mysteriously handcuffed to history, my destinies indissolubly chained to those of my country.

The people with whom you share a history: these are the people who can leave you shipwrecked and drowning.

History is the consequence not only of people's actions, but also of their forgetfulness.

On this day Bisnaga moves out of the realm of the fantastic into that of the historical, and the great river of its story flows into the ocean of stories which is the history of the world.

History is unkind to those it abandons, and can be equally unkind to those who make it.

One day, perhaps, the world may taste the pickles of history. They may be too strong for some palates, their smell may be overpowering, tears may rise to eyes; I hope nevertheless that it will be possible to say of them that they possess the authentic taste of truth … that they are, despite everything, acts of love.

On December 15th, 1971, Tiger Niazi surrendered to Sam Manekshaw;

This is how history moves; the obsession of one moment is relegated to the junkyard of oblivion by the next.

since the past exists only in one's memories and the words which strive vainly to encapsulate them, it is possible to create past events simply by saying they occurred.

And so it's interesting to remember that when Mahatma Gandhi, the father of an earlier freedom movement, came to England and was asked what he thought of English civilization, he replied: 'I think it would be a good idea.

Family history, of course, has its proper dietary laws. One is supposed to swallow and digest only the permitted parts of it, the halal portions of the past, drained of their redness, their blood.

it is the privilege and the curse of midnight's children to be both masters and victims of their times

En esta ciudad, Mahound, el negociante-profeta, está fundando una de las grandes religiones del mundo;

But the past is not less valuable because it is no longer the present. In fact, it's more important, because forever unseen.

She, whose life had blown up, emptying her of history and leaving in its place only that dark dream of majesty, that illusion so powerful that it demanded to enter the sphere of what-was-real - she, rootless Bilquis, who now longed for stability, for no-more-explosions, had discerned in Raza a boulder-like quality on which she would build her life. He was a man rooted solidly in an indeflectible sense of himself, and that made him seem invincible.

When people start talking about a golden age," he said, "they always think a new world has begun which will last forever. But the truth about these so-called golden ages is that they never last very long. A few years, maybe. There's always trouble ahead.

At times of great upheaval when the wind blows and the tide of history surges, cool heads are needed to navigate a path to calmer waters.

And by that destiny, to perform an act Whereof what's past is prologue, what to come In yours and my discharge.

The trouble with the English is their history happened overseas, so they don't know what it means. The secret if a dinner party in London is to outnumber the English, if they're outnumbered they behave, otherwise you're in trouble.

I should have known: no escape from past acquaintance. What you were is forever who you are.

they all were, in the grip of a huge fantasy: the idea that men would not be judged by who they once were and what they had once done, if they only decided to be different. They wanted to step away from the responsibilities of history and be free.

But now, discontinuity ruled. Yesterday meant nothing and could not help you build tomorrow. Life had become a series of vanishing photographs, posted every day, gone the next. One had no story anymore. Character, narrative, history, were all dead. Only the flat caricature of the instant remained, and that was what one was judged by. To have lived long enough to witness the replacement of the depth of her chosen world's culture by its surfaces was a sad thing.