Quotes About History

The past grows gradually around one, like a placenta for dying.

In no other form of society in history has there been such a concentration of images, such a density of visual messages.

If we can see the present clearly enough, we shall ask the right questions of the past.

The single word that counted on Wednesday was the one that came from the muzzle of a gun, addressed to somebody on their knees. Better to choose our hour than to accept this. We know each other. We've known each other from the time of Crocodilopolis. [Letter unsent]

A people or a class which is cut off from its own past is far less free to choose and to act as a people or class than one that has been able to situate itself in history.

Resmin ilk konusu hayvanlard?. Ve en baÅŸtan baÅŸlay?p Sümer, Asur, M?s?r ve ilk dönem Yunan resminde devam eden bir çizgide, bu hayvanlar?n tasvirleri olaÄŸanüstü derecede hakikidir. Ä°nsan gövdesinin tasvirinde eÅŸdeÄŸer bir 'gerçek-gibi'liÄŸe ula??lmas? için biny?llar?n geçmesi gerekmiÅŸtir. BaÅŸlang?çta insan?n yüzleÅŸtiÄŸi, varoland?." sayfa 30

The photographic moment for Cartier-Bresson is an instant, a fraction of a second, and he stalks that instant as though it were a wild animal. The photographic moment for Strand is a biographical or historic moment, whose duration is ideally measured not by seconds but by its relation to a lifetime. Strand does not pursue an instant, but encourages a moment to arise as one might encourage a story to be told.

Images were first made to conjure up the appearances of something that was absent. Gradually it became evident that an image could outlast what it represented ; it then showed how something or somebody had once looked - and thus by implication how the subject had once been seen by other people. Later still this specific vision of the image-maker was also recognized as part of the record. An image became a record of how X had seen Y.

The past is not for living in; it is a well of conclusions from which we draw in order to act.

geçmiÅŸ hiçbir zaman olduÄŸu yerde durup yeniden keÅŸfedilmeyi, ayn?yla, olduÄŸu gibi tan?nmay? beklemez. tarih her zaman belli bir ÅŸimdi'yle onun geçmiÅŸi aras?ndaki iliÅŸkiyi kurar. demek ki ÅŸimdi'den korkmak eskiyi bulandirmaya yol aç?yor. geçmiÅŸ içinde yaÅŸanacak bir ÅŸey deÄŸildir.

The past is never there waiting to be discovered, to be recognized for exactly what it is. History always constitutes the relation between a present and its past. The past is not for living in; it is a well of conclusions from which we draw in order to act.

ANGELICA SAVED BY RUGGIERO 19TH CENTURY A ROMAN FEAST 19TH CENTURY PAN AND SYRINX 18TH CENTURY

The tombstones are not very different from those in other European cemeteries. Many record the deaths of several generations: the name, the year of birth, the day of death and the place of death, if it was not on the island. A name and two dates, the last one precise to the very day. This is what is recorded. About what happened between, apart from the bare fact of survival, not a word is written.

The past is the one thing we are not prisoners of. We can do with the past exactly what we wish. What we can't do is to change its consequences.

History always constitutes the relation between a present and its past. Consequently fear of the present leads to mystification of the past

Who needs death metal when you've got the Nazis?" They passed

Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill

Those men and women were not press-ganged into service. It was not just a choice for them. It was and remains a calling. And sir, no nation on earth can hope to survive long without people who will answer that call. No nation can hope to survive if it does not respect what they have offered and do the hard things that history sometimes asks of us. Sometimes, Mister President, there is no answer but blood.

Politicians, like generals, have a tendency to fight the last war.

only the victims and survivors can truly comprehend the awfulness of that time and place; the rest of us live on the other side of the fence, staring through from our own comfortable place, trying in our own clumsy ways to make sense of it all.

Their lost voices Must continue to be heard.

Heil Hitler ," he said, which, he presumed, was another way of saying, "Well, goodbye for now, have a pleasant afternoon.

England is the mother of Parliaments.

The knowledge of the ancient languages is mainly a luxury.