Quotes About History

Every man and every nation at one time or other becomes the weak. That's why nobody should tolerate persecution, let alone extermination, as a precedent. (p581)

Notes on the State of Virginia

The past is the place we view the present from as much as the other way around.

It is more than just memory, I think, that binds us to the past. The past is the place we view the present from as much as the other way around...

The real turning point in human history is less apt to be the day the wheel is invented or Rome falls than the day a boy is born to a couple of hick Jews.

As I see it, in other words, God acts in history and in your and my brief histories not as the puppeteer who sets the scene and works the strings but rather as the great director who no matter what role fate casts us in conveys to us somehow from the wings, if we have our eyes, ears, hearts open and sometimes even if we don't, how we can play those roles in a way to enrich and ennoble and hallow the whole vast drama of things including our own small but crucial parts in it.

And over there, London is also on fire, and they say that Hyde Park is carpeted with crocuses purple as flame, and botanists haunt bomb craters for flowers, unknown since the great fire of 1666, brought to life by nitrates from the burning bombs, life blossoming out of death, beauty out of pain, the past out of the present, these fundamental things of life as time goes by. (78-79)

We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and the future.

Genealogical trees do not flourish among slaves.

never having seen any authentic record containing it. By far the larger part of the slaves know as little of their ages as horses know of theirs, and it is the wish of most masters within my knowledge to keep their slaves thus ignorant. I do not remember to have ever met a slave who could tell of his birthday. They seldom come nearer to it than planting-time, harvesttime, cherry-time, spring-time, or fall-time. A

Our past was slavery. We cannot recur to it with any sense of complacency or composure. The history of it is a record of stripes, a revelation of agony. It is written in characters of blood. Its breath is a sigh, its voice a groan, and we turn from it with a shudder. The duty of to-day is to meet the questions that confront us with intelligence and courage. —Frederick Douglass, "The Nation's Problem

Whether we turn to the declarations of the past, or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future.

Mr. Thomas Lanman, of St. Michael's, killed two slaves, one of whom he killed with a hatchet, by knocking his brains out. He used to boast of the commission of the awful and bloody deed. I have heard him do so laughingly, saying, among other things, that he was the only benefactor of his country in the company, and that when others would do as much as he had done, we should be relieved of the d-----d [n***ers].

Give me the making of a nation's ballads and I care not who has the making of its Laws.

Leaving the Great House, my presence became known to the colored people, some of whom were children of those I had known when a boy. They all seemed delighted to see me, and were pleased when I called over the names of many of the old servants

I wanted to be another Nat Turner; and if I did not look out, I should get as many balls into me, as Nat did into him. Thus ended the infant Sabbath school, in the town of St. Michael's.

Mr. Hunter not only congratulated me upon my speech, but at parting, gave me a friendly grip, and added that if Robert E. Lee were alive and present, he knew he would give me his hand also.

Fortunately, I have forgotten most of the things that have happened to me. Fortunately, the mind has a limited capacity for remembering. It would be horrible if I remembered the details of a hundred and eighty thousand years—the details of four thousand lifetimes that I have lived since the first great atomic war.

p5 - It is matter for wonder: the moment that is here and gone, that was nothing before and nothing after, returns like a specter to trouble the quiet of a later moment...the beast(animals)...forgets at once and sees every moment really die, sink into night and mist, extinguished forever. The beast lives unhistorically...

I want to build / and raise anew / Theseus' Temple and the Stadiums / and where Pericles lived But there's no money, too much spent today / I had a guest over and we sat together.

Everything that I have known You'll write to me to remind Me of, and likewise I shall do The whole past I'll recount to you

It is not conflict of opinions that has made history so violent but conflict of belief in opinions, that is to say conflict of convictions.

Christianity remains to this day the greatest misfortune of humanity.

Human history would be nothing but a record of stupidity save for the cunning contributions of the weak