People regard art too highly, and history not enough

History is all about ‘what ifs

They’ve never known a time when people drank rain water because it was pure, or could eat snow, or swim in any river or brook. The last time I drove to Washington the traffic was...

AND IF WE ARE TO STRIVE FOR A BETTER FUTURE, MUSTN’T WE BE FAMILIAR AND RECONCILED WITH OUR PAST?

After 1656 the Dutch, who had gained control over the Moluccas, chose the islands that could be most easily defended. They then burned all the nutmeg trees on the other islands to make sure no...

The past was worth remembering and knowing in its own right. It was not behind us, never truly behind us, but under us, holding us up, a foundation for all that was to come and...

There is no solution. I can see no possibility of peace in my lifetime. So long as they continue with their attacks, we will continue our defenses. We are trapped in tits for tats. It...

History was a bitch sometimes. You couldn’t change where you were from. But still, you didn’t have to stay there. You didn’t have to stay stuck in the past, like the ladies in the DAR,...

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.

And, if you’ll investigate the history of science, my dear boy, I think you’ll find that most of the really big ideas have come from intelligent playfulness. All the sober, thin-lipped concentration is really just...

He who would confine his thought to present time will not understand present reality.

Falar do passado é o mais fácil que há, está tudo escrito, é só repetir, papaguear, conferir pelos livros o que os alunos [escrevem] nos livros ou nas chamadas orais, ao passo que falar de...

What is history? Any thoughts, Webster?”History is the lies of the victors,’ I replied, a little too quickly.’Yes, I was rather afraid you’d say that. Well, as long as you remember that it is also...

Finally liberty has come!

We are now edging across the boundary – always a porous one – between self-justification and fantasy. Matthews’ story is by no means a complete fantasy: we can recognise every event. But the frame of...

We tried to make the prosaic attractive without using the tired clichés of false glamour. You might say we tried to convey the attractiveness of reality, as opposed to the glitter of a never-never land.—Cipe...

Religion, with its metaphysical error of absolute guilt, dominated the broadest, the cosmic realm. From there, it infiltrated the subordinate realms of biological, social and moral existence with its errors of the absolute and inherited...

The ages live in history through their anachronisms.

Historians are not scientists. They cannot (and should not even trying to) establish universal laws of social or political “physics” with reliable predictive powers. Why? Because there is no possibility of repeating the single, multi-millennium...

A bad leader wouldn’t stress the importance of staying together to stop the enemy. You want peace? You can’t forgive the enemy, if you can’t forgive your men for losing faith. You can’t force every...

The truth is usually left for us to hunt and gather independently, if we are so inclined.

Historians are left forever chasing shadows, painfully aware of their inability ever to reconstruct a dead world in its completeness however thorough or revealing their documentation. We are doomed to be forever hailing someone who...

If you could not accept the past and its burden there was no future, for without one there cannot be the other.

What was the point of living through history if you didn’t record it?

What if I can’t turn my head? I can look in any direction by turning my wheelchair, and I choose to look back. Rodman to the contrary notwithstanding, that is the only direction we can...

We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend...

That’s past history, … He had the surgery. It’s over with. All we can hope for now is a speedy recovery and just go forward.

It has been said that although God cannot alter the past, historians can –it is perhaps because they can be useful to Him in this respect that He tolerates their existence.

Quei due mondi erano specchi deformanti: si riflettevano a vicenda e gettavano luci e ombre l’uno sull’altro, come se s’interrogassero e ponessero in dubbio reciprocamente. L’illusione era così perfetta che dovevo ripetermi in continuazione che...

I have no expectation that any man will read history aright who thinks that what was done in a remote age, by men whose names have resounded far, has any deeper sense than what he...

For an instant he thought he grasped the truth of a terrifying world in which one could not escape horror, in which violence was eternal, the great and only verity, greater than the civilisations it...

History is the nothing people write about a nothing.

To understand how that astounding moral blindness was possible, it is helpful to think of the workers of an armament plant who rejoice in the ‘stay of execution’ of their factory thanks to big new...

History is a burden. Stories can make us fly.

That was probably the biggest win in the history of the franchise.

Like a lot of stupid people, it took a great deal to get an idea into the king’s head, but once there, there was no shifting it.

Film photography will always be superior to digital – because no matter how many lasers and instant buttons and HD pixels you’ve got, a human being can take a photograph with much more integrity and...

Before the man lost his sight, he read this story in a magazine: a group of explorers came upon a community of parrots speaking the language of a society that had been wiped out in...

Mother, before God,” I say, my voice shaking with tears, “I swear that I have to believe that there is more for me in life than being wife to one man after another, and hoping...

Whether you need to remember the past or not, It changes nothing but gives the best choice for the future that makes You always to remember your past.

I’ve always had a keen sense of history. My father was an antiques dealer and he used to bring home boxes full of treasures, and each item always had a tale attached.

The only enemy which stands between the talent you posses and success you achieve is known as “EGO” in our Society

A too often forgotten truth is that you can live through actual events of history and completely miss the underlying reality of what’s going. What history misses, the myth clearly expresses. The myth in the...

Life doesn’t walk away, we do.

Think of any great man or woman. How can you separate them from the years in which they lived? You can’t. Their greatness lies in their response to that moment.

I think it’s going to go down as an important point in our history. And I know they’re (BEGIN BRACKET) Toyota (END BRACKET) looking at it from a long-term view.

Americans may say they love our accents (I have been accused of sounding ‘like Princess Di’) but the more thoughtful ones resent and rather dislike us as a nation and people, as friends of mine...

Without realizing that the past is constantly determining their present actions, they avoid learning anything about their history. They continue to live in their repressed childhood situation, ignoring the fact that is no longer exists,...

Things just happen, one after another. They don’t care who knows. But history… ah, history is different. History has to be observed. Otherwise it’s not history. It’s just… well, things happening one after another.

History is made by people. And the majority of people are arseholes. Which is I suppose why the majority of history has been so disastrous.