Historical Quotes
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“The history of which peoples, nations, or civilizations have conquered or enslaved which other peoples, nations, or civilizations has been largely a history of who has been in a position to do so.”
Quote by -Thomas Sowell
“The lack of historical memory is a serious shortcoming in our society. A mentality that can only say, “Then was then, now is now”, is ultimately immature. Knowing and judging past events is the only way to build a meaningful future. Memory is necessary for growth.”
Quote by -Pope Francis
“As all historians know, the past is a great darkness, and filled with echoes.”
Quote by -Margaret Atwood
“I find it difficult [to believe] that… Christians accuse [Black Muslims] of teaching racial supremacy or… hatred, because their own history and… teachings are filled with it.”
Quote by -Malcolm X
"I send you a kaffis of mustard seed, that you may taste and acknowledge the bitterness of my victory."
Quote by -Alexander The Great
"I consider not what Parmenio should receive, but what Alexander should give."
Quote by -Alexander The Great
"True, I have raped history, but it has produced some beautiful offspring."
Quote by -Alexander Dumas
"A spirit of innovation is generally the result of a selfish temper, and confined views. People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors."
Quote by -Edmund Burke
"I have learned more [from Balzac] than from all the professional historians, economists, and statisticians put together."
Quote by -Friedrich Engels
"Almost certainly, my ancestors had travelled by sea from Sweden to England in search of prosperity, and the evidence suggests they left Sweden around the ninth or 10th centuries."
Quote by -Gordon Brown
"In historic events, the so-called great men are labels giving names to events, and like labels they have but the smallest connection with the event itself. Every act of theirs, which appears to them an act of their own will, is in an historical sense involuntary and is related to the whole course of history and predestined from eternity."
Quote by -Leo Tolstoy
There is a difference between what technology enables and what historical business practices enable.
Quote by -Bill Gates
“The need of exercise is a modern superstition, invented by people who ate too much and had nothing to think about. Athletics don’t make anybody long-lived or useful.”
Quote by -George Santayana
Among the many misdeeds of British rule in India, history will look upon the Act which deprived a whole nation of arms as the blackest.
Quote by -Mahatama Gandhi
Good women are no fun... The only good woman I can recall in history was Betsy Ross. And all she ever made was a flag.
Quote by -Mae West
If you look at U.S. history through religious history, there is very much a motif that shows the importance religion has played in the U.S. We're a very religious country and it affects the way we look at various political issues.
Quote by -Madeleine Albright
Jewelry and pins have been worn throughout history as symbols of power, sending messages. Interestingly enough, it was mostly men who wore the jewelry in various times, and obviously crowns were part of signals that were being sent throughout history by people of rank.
Quote by -Madeleine Albright
"Great abilities are not requisite for an Historian; for in historical composition, all the greatest powers of the human mind are quiescent. He has facts ready to his hand; so there is no exercise of invention. Imagination is not required in any degree; only about as much as is used in the lowest kinds of poetry. Some penetration, accuracy, and coloring, will fit a man for the task, if he can give the application which is necessary."
Quote by -Samuel Johnson
"In the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed."
Quote by -Charles Darwin
"History is an account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools."
Quote by -Ambrose Bierce
"Academe, n.: An ancient school where morality and philosophy were taught. Academy, n.: A modern school where football is taught."
Quote by -Ambrose Bierce
"We don't want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker's dam is the history we make today."
Quote by -Henry Ford
"[The Hits 1789-'97 George Washington was serenaded with new words to] God Save the King ... I don't know whether you have abandoned your old principles or whether you ever had any."
Quote by -Thomas Paine
"The leader of an Earth organization who makes a commitment to history - of humans living on Earth, to begin permanent settlement/occupation of not the moon, but of another planet - this leader will have a legacy for history that will supersede Columbus, Genghis Khan or almost any recognized leader."
Quote by -Buzz Aldrin
"There's a historical milestone in the fact that our Apollo 11 landing on the moon took place a mere 66 years after the Wright Brothers' first flight."
Quote by -Buzz Aldrin
"The first footfalls on Mars will mark a historic milestone, an enterprise that requires human tenacity matched with technology to anchor ourselves on another world."
Quote by -Buzz Aldrin
"The Greeks had invented democracy, built the Acropolis and called it a day."
Quote by -David Sedaris
“We can no longer rely on tradition, on consensus, on cultural habit, on unanimity of belief to give us our values. These agreed-upon traditions are all gone. Of course, we never should have rested on traditionas its failures must have proven to everyone by now-it never was a firm foundation. It was destroyed too easily by truth, by honesty, by the facts, by science, by simple, pragmatic, historical failure.”
Quote by -Abraham Maslow
“The ancient Egyptians had a superstitious antipathy to the sea; a superstition nearly of the same kind prevails among the Indians; and the Chinese have never excelled in foreign commerce.”
Quote by -Adam Smith
“Every person, according to an ancient legend, is born into the world with two bags suspended from their neck: all bags in front full of their neighbors’ faults, and a large bag behind filled with his own faults. Hence it is that people are quick to see the faults of others, and yet are often blind to their own failings.”
Quote by -Aesop
“It is impossible to read the history of the petty republics of Greece and Italy without feeling sensations of horror and disgust at the distractions with which they were continually agitated, and at the rapid succession of revolutions by which they were kept in a state of perpetual vibration between the extremes of tyranny and anarchy. If they exhibit occasional calms, these only serve as short-lived contrast to the furious storms that are to succeed. If now and then intervals of felicity open to view, we behold them with a mixture of regret, arising from the reflection that the pleasing scenes before us are soon to be overwhelmed by the tempestuous waves of sedition and party rage.”
Quote by -Alexander Hamilton
A Persian army being then subject to great inconveniences, for their horses are tied and generally shackled to prevent them from running away, and if an alarm happens, a Persian has the housing to fix, his horse to bridle, and his corslet to put on before he can mount.
Quote by -Xenophon
Historical materialism has every reason to distinguish itself sharply from bourgeois habits of thought. Its founding concept is not progress but actualization.
Quote by -Walter Benjamin
The older Romans used temples as their banks, as we use banks as our temples;
Quote by -Will Durant
The historian always oversimplifies, and hastily selects a manageable minority of facts and faces out of a crowd of souls and events whose multitudinous complexity he can never quite embrace or comprehend.
Quote by -Will Durant
Not to be occupied, and not to exist, amount to the same thing," he said. "All people are good except those who are idle.
Quote by -Will Durant