Quotes About History

Viriconium is all the cities there have ever been.' Audsley King, Reminiscences

her eyes looked as bruised as if their life together had already occurred

The whole course of human history may depend on a change of heart in one solitary and even humble individual.... For it is in the solitary mind and soul of the individual that the battle between good and evil is waged and ultimately won or lost.

In a very real sense, we begin with science. We begin by replacing the religion of our parents with the religion of science. We must rebel against and reject the religion of our parents, for inevitably their world view will be narrower than that of which we are capable if we take full advantage of our personal experience, including our adult experience and the experience of an additional generation of human history. There is no such thing as a good hand-me-down religion.

Time creates history. Meditation creates the moment.

My mind flashed back to the Cultural Revolution, when a group of Red Guards pulled our neighbor, Granny Li, out of the opera company's dormitory block and ordered the rest of us to bring out our thermos flasks. We then had to stand and watch as the Red Guards poured ten flasks of boiling water over Granny Li's head.

Families destroyed by Mao Zedong hang posters of him on their walls. Because they all know Chinese history changes as frequently as the Yellow River floods its banks.

Segundo Monteiro Lobato, "um país se faz com homens e livros". Podemos extrapolar e dizer que os sonhos de uma nação se tecem em sua literatura. A cada nova leitura dessas obras, os sentidos ali registrados se renovam, iluminando o passado, contrastando-se com o presente e enriquecendo as aspirações para o futuro. Assim, mais que a história, a literatura é o testemunho palpitante de um povo.

it should be noted that nature is capricious and history an eternal laurel.

A falta de uma crítica assim é um dos maiores males de que padece a nossa literatura; é mister que a análise corrija ou anime a invenção, que os pontos de doutrina e de história se investiguem, que as belezas se estudem, que os senões se apontem, que o gosto se apure e eduque, e se desenvolva e caminhe aos altos destinos que a esperam.

As imoralidades do Império, bem mais contidas ou mais bem assimiladas ou ocultas, não servem como álibi para as da República, as quais parecem uma espécie de vingança dos "espíritos animais" enjaulados durante tantos anos.

no one should marvel at the ease with which Alexander [the Great] kept possession of Asia, or at the difficulties which others, like Pyrrhus and many more, had in preserving their conquests. The difference does not arise from the greater or lesser ability of the conqueror, but from dissimilarities in the conquered lands.

Prudent men are wont to say--and this not rashly or without good ground--that he who would foresee what has to be should reflect on what has been, for everything that happens in the world at any time has genuine resemblance to what happened in ancient times. -- Machiavelli

Trump is the first anti-democratic president in modern U.S. history.

There are forces working in the world as never before in the history of mankind for standardization, for the regimentation of us all, or what I like to call making muffins of us, muffins all like every other muffin in the muffin tin. This is the limited universe, the drying dissipating universe that we can help our children to avoid by providing them with 'explosive material capable of stirring up fresh life endlessly'.

And it came to me as I stood on the desert sand, looking at the Great Pyramid, that what any civilization says about God tells us more about that civilization than it does about God.

There are forces working in the world as never before in the history of mankind for standardization, for the regimentation of us all, or what I like to call making muffins of us, muffins all like every other muffin in the muffin tin. This is the limited universe, the drying, dissipating universe, that we can help our children avoid by providing them with "explosive material capable of stirring up fresh life endlessly.

The Greeks had a word for ultimate self-consciousness which I find illuminating: hubris: pride: pride in the sense of putting oneself in the center of the universe. The strange and terrible thing is that this kind of total self-consciousness invariably ends in self-annihilation. The great tragedians have always understood this, from Sophocles to Shakespeare. We witness it in history in such people as Tiberius, Eva Perón, Hider. I

Yesterday's heresy becomes tomorrow's dogma," the bishop replied mildly, and Polly thought once again of Giordano Bruno.

One of the most pusillanimous things we of the female sex have done throughout the centuries is to have allowed the male sex to assume that mankind is masculine.

Charles Wallace nodded. "Mad Dog Branzillo was born in Vespugia. But right here, where we stand, Madoc came and married Zyll and made the roses burn for peace. What happened to the Wind People? Where are they now?" "They were lovers of peace," Gaudior replied shortly. "Your planet does not deal gently with lovers of peace.

She told them to read a poem every day and think about it, and whenever they went to a new place, to find out about its history and what had made it the place it had become.

Lavallee, Apothecary's Rose, Celsiana, Crested Moss, Souvenir de la Malmaison

I dream of a fortress so strong it can lock out the past.