Quotes About History

Reagan was no neocon.

We always have to remember that we, the Italians, have always cooperated with the U.S., and with Reagan and Carter and Nixon and Clinton, Bush and Obama. And Trump, Trump is the American-elected president. So, cooperation is there.

Here's one measure of the man and the scope of his achievement: No serious historian will be able to write about 20th-century America without discussing Bill Buckley. Before Buckley, there was no conservative movement. After Buckley, there was Ronald Reagan.

Every journey into the past is complicated by delusions, false memories, false namings of real events.

After all, the past is our only real guide to the future, and historical analogies are instruments for distilling and organizing the past and converting it to a map by which we can navigate.

It's not about the past; it's about knowing your history so that you can fight in the present. Otherwise, you don't know who the real enemy is, what the real issue is, because it had been covered by many layers of bad information, of lies, and manipulation.

Juventus will never be like Real Madrid or Barcelona because its history and playing style speak for itself.

Real Madrid is like Manchester United or Liverpool or Bayern Munich. There is so much history, and you need to play and win against that history. It's difficult to play against them because you fight against everything - the history, the players - but because of that, the motivation is always so high.

Don't ask me about Real Madrid - it's just the past.

There are so many great players who have played for Real Madrid.

Nobody thought Real Madrid could win three Champions Leagues on the trot, and they've done it.

David Ben-Gurion was a mythic figure, the founding father of Israel and a modern-day prophet, but he was also a real man who stormed through history on human legs. It was my great privilege to know him and work with him for many years.

Real people speak in my books about the main events of the age, such as the war, the Chernobyl disaster, and the downfall of a great empire.

Even a moderniser like Alexander II - who emancipated the serfs in 1861 - had no intention of devolving real power.

In France, when there was a war, we fought and our ancestors fought, though many had real reason to flee the Germans.

I can't read historical fiction because I find the real thing so much more interesting.

I can't see much purpose in archaeology unless you can find out the narrative about that place, or even realise that nobody actually knows what the narrative was.

I must admit that i am fascinated by the glories of ancient India. But when will the purveyors of Indian culture realise that not everything about our past was glorious?

The great European dream was to diminish militant nationalism. We would all be happy Europeans together. But we are going to see the old monster of militant nationalism being awoken when people realise how little control their politicians have.

One of the great things about making 'Reel History' was meeting British people from all over the class system. It made me realise that London is a different country.

It's shocking when you start to grow up and realise that your parents had a life before you! But why would you? Sometimes you don't really have a need to.

I realised that people respond to banal things. They don't accept their own history, not participating in acceptance within their own being.

When you have a child, you think about your personal history and what you offer them as a larger narrative, and I realised I knew nothing about my father's circumstances other than what he'd told me.

Blending hard-bitten realism with long-view optimism, Obama said that every 20 or 30 years brings a new cycle of pessimism in America.