History Quotes

“The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays is coming to its close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences.”
― Winston S. Churchill

“Let’s de-bunk some of this, shall we? Myth 1– Kings and Queens are divine beings – rubbish. Kings and queens of old were murdering bastards who ruled with a rod of iron. Myth 2 – the rich prosper out of godliness – more rubbish. They gained their wealth by royal patronage and taxing and stealing from the masses. Myth 3 - the poor are poor because they’re depraved – yet more rubbish. They’re poor because of their naivety and childlike belief in, oh yes, Kings and Queens, the Church and the order of things. Finally, Myth 4 - women are evil and deliberately seductive – the biggest nonsense of all. Women are sexually attractive to men because they are the opposite sex to men; it’s not hard to see, is it? It’s the same for every species on the planet, you can see it in any mating ritual on the Discovery channel but this truth has been reversed and buried under the eternal lie fostered upon us by the church. That’s what the bible has achieved and that’s why our society is divided and divided again. That’s why we are never working as one, because religion was designed to divide and rule the masses,” she broke off and looked deliberately round the room, “but the big question is, for what purpose and by whom?”
― Arun D. Ellis

“History dressed up in the glow of love’s kiss turned grief into beauty.”
― Aberjhani, The River of Winged Dreams

“It is better to fill your head with useless knowledge than no knowledge at all.”
― Jim Hinckley, Route 66 Backroads: Your Guide to Scenic Side Trips & Adventures from the Mother Road

“But it is no use to justify yourself. It is no good to explain. It is weak to be anecdotal. It is wise to conceal the past even if there is nothing to conceal. A man's power is in the half-light, in the half-seen movements of his hand and the unguessed-at expression of his face. It is the absence of facts that frightens people: the gap you open, into which they pour their fears, fantasies, desires.”
― Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall

“The American generals could only think in terms of large armies and huge battles. They believed or hoped that an enemy who chose to hide in jungles and tunnels would quickly be flushed out by American fire-power and then die in open battle.”
― Michael G. Kramer, A Gracious Enemy

“The artillery fire which helped in holding off the enemy advance against the Australian positions appeared to be getting always closer. A radio operator called Vic Grice somehow replaced the antenna on Buick’s radio. That had been shot off, thus rendering the radio in-operational.”
― Michael G. Kramer, A Gracious Enemy

“...most people in the ancient world, did not make a sharp distinction between myth and reality. The two were intimately tied together in their spiritual experience. That is to say, they were less interested in what actually happened, than in what it meant. It would have been perfectly normal, indeed expected, for a writer in the ancient world, to tell tales of gods and heroes, whose fundamental facts would have been recognized as false, but whose underlying message would have been seen as true.”
― Reza Aslan, Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth

“Killing War

I had no desire to alter the viable occupations of humanity, but I was determined to do something about the level of regional bloodshed.
Education was my weapon of choice, based on a simple hypothesis: that the advance troops of physical carnage are the propaganda and lies that justify murder, making the real battleground that of ideas.
I was determined to address a situation where so many people were ready to kill, driven by the conviction that others are either evil incarnate or will murder them first if they don’t kill them first if they don’t …
Entire nations were buried in twisted truths submerged by hate, covered with vengeance. Voices of remorse, forgiveness, justice and reconciliation were drowned out by the din of screams for death or revenge.
The best defense system against the cycle of violence was something that is impervious to any tool of destruction ever spawned. That something is knowledge.”
― Nancy Omeara, The Most Popular President Who Ever Lived [So Far]

“The requirement for anyone running for elected office to have held a position of public service, such as fireman, school teacher, librarian, scout leader, or policeman was never actually passed into law.
Still the range of day jobs that some of our Congress people now hold are pretty amazing.
Somehow these days a background as a lawyer is a big minus.”
― Nancy Omeara, The Most Popular President Who Ever Lived [So Far]

“التاريخ يعيد نفسه مرة أو مرتين لكن التليفزيون ألف مرة”
― أنيس منصور, لعلك تضحك

“I am the Love that Dare not Speak its Name”
― Alfred B. Douglas

“There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before.”
― Willa Cather, O Pioneers!

“Some people like the Jews, and some do not. But no thoughtful man can deny the fact that they are, beyond any question, the most formidable and most remarkable race which has appeared in the world.
— Winston S. Churchill”
― Ellen Brazer, Clouds Across the Sun

“We need the courage to learn from our past and not live in it.”
― Sharon Salzberg, The Force of Kindness: Change Your Life with Love & Compassion

“من أوجب الواجبات على الدولة أن تترك العلماء أحراراً في حكمهم على الأمور، أن تشعرهم باستقلالهم، لأنهم قادة الفكر، كما أن على العلماء أن يتمسكوا بهذا الاستقلال. فاستقلال العلم والعلماء شرط لابد منه لحياة العلم والفضيلة على حد سواء. وإذا ضاع استقلال العلم ضاع العلم وضاعت الفضيلة، بل وضاعت الأمة. وقد بقيت أوروبا ألف عام في ظلمات العصور الوسطى، لأن أمورهم كانت في أيدي قوم لا يؤمنون بالحق، ولا يؤمنون باستقلال العلم، فاضطهدوا العلماء، وحاربوا حرية الفكر، واتغمسوا في الجهالة محتمين وراء الجدل اللفظي الأجوف، فعم الظلم والضلال.”
― علي مصطفى مشرفة, العلم والحياة

“History,' Mari muttered, as if she'd overheard his thoughts. 'Why do we need to know what happened before we were born?'

'So hopefully we get smarter and don't make the same mistakes again.”
― Cinda Williams Chima, The Demon King

“He gave me a small smile, and in that smile I saw our whole catastrophic history playing out before my eyes.”
― Jess Rothenberg, The Catastrophic History of You and Me

“The war which is coming
Is not the first one. There were
Other wars before it.
When the last one came to an end
There were conquerors and conquered.
Among the conquered the common people
Starved. Among the conquerors
The common people starved too.
”
― Bertolt Brecht, Poems 1913-1956

“Herodotus says, "Very few things happen at the right time, and the rest do not happen at all: the conscientious historian will correct these defects.”
― Mark Twain

“I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am, also, much more than that. So are we all.”
― James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son

“Fools who don't respect the past are doomed to repeat it.”
― Nico Robin

“Among the many worlds which man did not receive as a gift of nature, but which he created with his own mind, the world of books is the greatest. Every child, scrawling his first letters on his slate and attempting to read for the first time, in so doing, enters an artificial and complicated world; to know the laws and rules of this world completely and to practice them perfectly, no single human life is long enough. Without words, without writing, and without books there would be no history, there could be no concept of humanity. And if anyone wants to try to enclose in a small space in a single house or single room, the history of the human spirit and to make it his own, he can only do this in the form of a collection of books.”
― Hermann Hesse, My Belief

“Want of foresight, unwillingness to act when action would be simple and effective, lack of clear thinking, confusion of counsel until the emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong - these are the features which constitute the endless repetition of history.”
― Winston S. Churchill

“Conventional belief holds that after triumphing over a mid-career bout with polio, FDR went on to serve two vigorous terms as gov- ernor of New York and three-plus more as president of the United States, succumbing unexpectedly to a stroke on April 12, 1945. In truth, Franklin spent those eventful twenty-four years battling swarms of maladies including polio’s ongoing crippling effects, life-threatening gastrointestinal bleeding, two incurable cancers, severe cardiovascular disease, and epilepsy.”
― Steven Lomazow, FDR Unmasked: 73 Years of Medical Cover-ups That Rewrote History

“Look, part of the whole technique of disempowering people is to make sure that the real agents of change fall out of history, and are never recognized in the culture for what they are. So it's necessary to distort history and make it look as if Great Men did everything - that's part of how you teach people they can't do anything, they're helpless, they just have to wait for some Great Man to come along and do it for them.”
― Noam Chomsky, Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky

“What really happened doesn't matter. What matters is how we agree to remember it.”
― Leila Sales, Past Perfect

“The student is to read history actively not passively.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance and Other Essays

“We live in a moment of history where change is so speeded up that we begin to see the present only when it is already disappearing.”
― R.D. Laing

“This is the tale of Magic Alex, the man who was everywhere: with Leonard Cohen in Hydra; in Crete with Joni Mitchell; in a Paris bathroom when Jimmy Morrison went down; working as a roadie setting up the Beatles last rooftop gig; an assistant to John and Yoko when they had a bed-in at the Amsterdam Hilton; with the Stones when they were charged for pissing against a wall; the first to find and save Dylan after the motorcycle accident; having it off with Mama Cass hours before she choked the big one; arranging the security at Altamont; at Haight-Ashbury with George Harrison and the Grateful Dead; and in the Japanese airport with McCartney after the dope rap. He was the guy Carly Simon was really singing about and the missing slice of ‘Bye, Bye Miss American Pie’.”
― Harry F. MacDonald, Magic Alex and the Secret History of Rock and Roll