Quotes About History

Science, then, is the reliable acquisition of knowledge about anything, whether it be the vagaries of human nature, the role of great figures in history, or the origins of life itself.

Cancer will be understood properly only by positioning it within the great sweep of evolutionary history.

Nikolaus Otto built and sold the first internal-combustion gasoline engine in 1861, and Rudolf Diesel built his engine in 1897

In Europe, the present is perceived as the endpoint of history. In America, the present is perceived as the beginning of the future.

Civilizations do fail. We have never seen one that hasn't. The difference is that the torch of progress has, in the past, always passed to another region of the world. But we now for the first time have a single, global civilization. If it fails, we all fail together.

Our present biosphere is the outcome of about 4 billion years of evolution, and we can trace cosmic history right back to a Big Bang that happened about 13.7 billion years ago.

The history of the object is more relevant than the object itself, if we want to pinpoint what is interesting to us.

Before about 1800, only two important attempts were made to establish income taxes—one in Florence during the fifteenth century, and the other in France during the eighteenth.

Before about 1800, only two important attempts were made to establish income taxes—one in Florence during the fifteenth century, and the other in France during the eighteenth. Generally speaking, both represented efforts by grasping rulers to mulct their subjects.

Since creation of the E.U. a half century ago, Europe has enjoyed the longest period of peace in its history.

We can pay our debt to the past by putting the future in debt to ourselves.

We have arrived where we are because of all that lies behind us. Finally, effective worship asks us to stretch forward. It has a dimension of aspiration.

As I child, I came to this idea with a horrified fascination. Once upon a time, I wasn't here. Before that, my parents weren't here. And before that…

No Memory happens in the past. To say this in so many words is, no doubt, to state the obvious - our memories happen now, in the madeleine- and tisane-tinctured present - but it strikes me as peculiar, still, that my recollections have so little to do with historical time.

Science has done more for the development of western civilization in one hundred years than Christianity did in eighteen hundred years.

In reality, there is, perhaps, no one of our natural passions so hard to subdue as pride. Disguise it, struggle with it, beat it down, stifle it, mortify it as much as one pleases, it is still alive, and will every now and then peep out and show itself; you will see it perhaps often in this history; for even if I could conceive that I had completely overcome it, I should probably be proud of my humility.

Pan marks Flying Down to Rio as the first time full dance numbers were seen on the screen, that is, a complete dance sequence that demanded the viewers' attention from beginning to end. Prior to that, dance had most often been relegated to background scenery or brief interludes or served as backup for vocal numbers.

But most importantly, by the late '40s, technically trained dancers were plentiful—a far cry from the self-taught hoofers of the '20s and '30s. This was fortunate not only for Pan, whose work demanded highly skilled and versatile dancers,

To my mind, if the cosmos does not know the significance of life, then it is not God; and if there were no God beyond the cosmos, then all human history would be like dancing to the blind and singing to the deaf; and all noble thought and action would be like kissing a cold statue. I believed in a personal God, not because I wanted to project my personality upon God, but because to deprive Him of this attribute would be making the effect greater than the cause.

We need not destroy the past. It is gone.

One of history's most useful tasks is to bring home to us how keenly, honestly and painfully, past generations pursued aims that now seem to us wrong or disgraceful.

What could be more American, after all, than being an immigrant and then, after a few decades, fearing immigration and reacting against it?

Every word has a history. Every word has an image locked into its roots.

Was the real Jesus of history one and the same as the Christ of faith whom we read about in the New Testament and worship in the church? Was Jesus really raised from the dead? Is he really the divine Lord of lords?