Historical Quotes - Page 6

• History unfolds itself by strange and unpredictable paths. We have little control over the future; and none at all over the past.

  Winston Churchill

  Future, Past, Littles

  Sir Winston Churchill (1954). “Sir Winston Churchill: a self-portrait”

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• History's villains are more easily recognized in retrospect. In an article published in 1935 and reprinted in 1937, Winston Churchill expressed a curious ambivalence towards the German chancellor prior to the outbreak of war: We cannot tell whether Hitler will be the man who will once again let loose upon the world another war in which civilization will irretrievably succumb, or whether he will go down in history as the man who restored honour and peace of mind to the great Germanic nation. . . .

  Winston Churchill

  War, Men, Civilization

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• Those old credulities, to Nature dear, Shall they no longer bloom upon the stock Of history?

  William Wordsworth

  Nature, Dear, Credulity

  William Wordsworth (1847). “The Poems of William Wordsworth”, p.274

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• O my Bergson, you are a magician, and your book is a marvel, a real wonder in the history of philosophy . . . In finishing it I found . . . such a flavor of persistent euphony, as of a rich river that never foamed or ran thin, but steadily and firmly proceeded with its banks full to the brim.

  William James

  Philosophy, Real, Book

  William James (1961). “Selected Letters”

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• As the British Constitution is the most subtle organism which has proceeded from progressive history, so the American Constitution is the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man.

  William E. Gladstone

  Work, Men, Brain

  North American Review, Sept./Oct. 1878

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• I cannot too often repeat that Democracy is a word the real gist of which still sleeps, quite unawakened, notwithstanding the resonance and the many angry tempests out of which its syllables have come, from pen or tongue. It is a great word, whose history, I suppose, remains unwritten because that history has yet to be enacted.

  Walt Whitman

  Real, Sleep, Democracy

  Walt Whitman, Floyd Stovall (2007). “Prose Works 1892, Volume II: Collect and Other Prose”, p.393, NYU Press

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• On the road, they join the bedraggled remnants of a column of exhausted Confederate soldiers evacuating burning Atlanta. Rhett makes her take note of the scene: "Take a good look, my dear. It's a historic moment. You can tell your grandchildren how you watched the Old South disappear one night."

  Vivien Leigh

  Grandchildren, Night, Atlanta

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• With a rumble and a roar, an iron curtain is descending on Russian history.

  Vasily Rozanov

  Iron, Russian History, Rumble

  "'Let Us Preach What We Practise': The Fulton Speech and Today's War" by Christopher C. Harmon, The Finest Hourmagazine, 135, p. 25, www.winstonchurchill.org. Summer 2007.

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• After such knowledge, what forgiveness? Think now History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions Guides us by vanities.

  T. S. Eliot

  Lying, Ambition, Knowledge

  "Gerontion" l. 33 (1920)

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• The study of History is the best medicine for a sick mind.

  Livy

  Medicine, Sick, Mind

  Livy (1967). “The early history of Rome: Books I-V of The history of Rome from its foundation”

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• We are dealing with the best-educated generation in history. But they've got a brain dressed up with nowhere to go. Science is all metaphor. In the information age, you don't teach philosophy as they did after feudalism. You perform it. If Aristotle were alive today he'd have a talk show. If you don't like what you are doing, you can always pick up your needle and move to another groove. If you take the game of life seriously, if you take your nervous system seriously, if you take your sense organs seriously, if you take the energy process seriously, you must turn on, tune in, and drop out.

  Timothy Leary

  Philosophy, Moving, Games

  Lecture, June 1966, in Politics of Ecstasy (1968) ch. 21

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• Thucydides, an Athenian, wrote the history of the war between the Peloponnesians and the Athenians, he began at the moment that it broke out, believing that it would be a great war, and more memorable than any that had preceded it.

  Thucydides

  War, Believe, Memorable

  Thucydides, Sir Richard Winn Livingstone (1960). “The History of the Peloponnesian War”, Oxford University Press, USA

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• [It is] a historic step toward eliminating the shameful practice of racial discrimination in the selection of juries.

  Thurgood Marshall

  Practice, Steps, Discrimination

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• For society as a whole, nothing comes as a "right" to which we are "entitled." Even bare subsistence has to be produced-and produced at a cost of heavy toil for much of human history. The only way anyone can have a right to something that has to be produced is to force someone else to produce it for him. The more things are provided as rights, the less the recipients have to work and the more others have to carry their load.

  Thomas Sowell

  Work, Rights, Toil

  Thomas Sowell (2011). “The Thomas Sowell Reader”, p.74, Basic Books

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• The United States of America will sound as pompously in the world or in history as The Kingdom of Great Britain.

  Thomas Paine

  America, Sound, United States

  Thomas Paine (1819). “The American Crisis”, p.20

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• History has a Nemesis for every sin.

  Theodor Mommsen

  Sin, Nemesis

  Theodor Mommsen (1864). “The History of Rome”, p.252

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• Many falsehoods are passing into uncontradicted history.

  Samuel Johnson

  Passing, Passings, Falsehood

  Samuel Johnson (2014). “The Letters of Samuel Johnson, Volume III: 1777-1781”, p.200, Princeton University Press

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• America was discovered accidentally by a great seaman who was looking for something else; when discovered it was not wanted; and most of the exploration for the next fifty years was done in the hope of getting through or around it. America was named after a man who discovered no part of the New World. History is like that, very chancy.

  Samuel Eliot Morison

  Hope, Men, Discovery

  The Oxford History of the American People ch. 2 (1965)

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• Presented memorial to [Constitutional Convention] committee on sufferage. Was very courteously treated. We all felt it a great day in the history of Utah. The committee informed us they had passed on W[oman] S[uffrage] being ten to five in favor.

  Ruth May Fox

  Utah, Memorial, Great Day

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• Regarding Ronald Reagan: In point of fact, the image of Ronald Reagan, the man responsible for shaping that decade (the 1980s), should be carved into Mount Rushmore, minted into coins, and emblazoned in a place of honor in every school child's history text as a constant reminder of this great man's contributions to world freedom, national pride, and individual prosperity. With the truth, the term 'Reaganomics' will be used only as a term of endearment and respect.

  Rush Limbaugh

  Children, School, Pride

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• Regarding the Economy & Taxation: America's most successful achievers do pay a higher share of the total tax burden. The top one percent income earners paid 18 percent of the total tax burden in 1981, and paid 25 percent in 1991. The bottom 50 percent of income earners paid only 8 percent of the total tax burden, and paid only 5 percent in 1991. History shows that tax cuts have always resulted in improved economic growth producing more tax revenue in the treasury.

  Rush Limbaugh

  Success, Cutting, America

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• It has taken biologists some 230 years to identify and describe three quarters of a million insects; if there are indeed at least thirty million, as Erwin (Terry Erwin, the Smithsonian Institute) estimates, then, working as they have in the past, insect taxonomists have ten thousand years of employment ahead of them. Ghilean Prance, director of the Botanical Gardens in Kew, estimates that a complete list of plants in the Americas would occupy taxonomists for four centuries, again working at historical rates.

  Richard Leakey

  Taken, Past, Garden

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• On the announcement that signs of extra terrestrial life were found in a meteorite, August 6, 1996 A hundred years from now Bob Dole's new tax plan will rate a footnote in the history books and this may have a whole chapter in itself.

  Richard E. Berendzen

  Book, August, Years

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• Sooner I'd try to change history than turn political, than try convincing others to write letters or to vote or to march or to do something they didn't already feel like doing.

  Richard Bach

  Change, Writing, Political

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• When players are used to winning, they put out a little more. Basketball 3rd winningest coach (regular season and playoffs) in NBA history; won 1,037 times in 20 years.

  Red Auerbach

  Basketball, Winning, Player

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