Quotes About History

As soon as plants began to be eaten by animals for the first time - way back in prehistory, before the first human took his first steps - the plants evolved chemicals to protect themselves from being devoured and destroyed. But these chemicals could, it soon turned out, produce strange effects. In some cases, instead of poisoning the plant's predators, they - quite by accident- altered their consciousness. This is when the pleasure of getting wasted enters the history.

Nothing hurts a new truth more than an old error.

Of all peoples the Greeks have dreamt the dream of life best.

Ignorant men raise questions that wise men answered a thousand years ago.

[History is a] mixture of error and violence.

Seeking with the soul the land of the Greeks.

We all of us live upon the past, and through the past we are destroyed.

The decline of literature indicates the decline of a nation.

It is delightful to transport one's self into the spirit of the past, to see how a wise man has thought before us.

Letters are among the most significant memorial a person can leave behind them.

Wer nicht von dreitausend Jahren sich weiß Rechenschaft zu geben, bleib im Dunkeln unerfahren, mag von Tag zu Tage leben.

It is astonishing to realise that the human species survived hundreds of thousands of years, more than 99 percent of its time on this planet, with a life expectancy of only eighteen years.

History is not life, but since only life makes history, the union of the two is obvious.

How much past there is in a life, however brief it be.

I can not be mistaken - what I say and do is historical.I follow my life with the precision and security of a sleep walker

Wars and elections are both too big and too small to matter in the long run.

Actually, I only have a few friends in real life. And when I say friends, I'm referring to those people who I've known since the 1960s.

I could write a treatise on the sudden transformation of life into archaeology

Scared is the price brave people pay to enjoy lives that make history.

Bought the Vegematic and Pocket Fisherman, too, illuminated illustrated history of Life, and Boxcar Willie.

I choose to believe that the same God who intervened to bring his Son back to life intervened on this day in history to help his people.

What we call National-Socialism is the poisonous perversion of ideas which have a long history in German intellectual life.

I've always subscribed to an old Chinese proverb that the palest ink is better than the best memory.

The whole history of my life, and in essence the whole history of the working class consists of this: that we have lived and fought under the leadership of Lenin and Stalin.