To live without history is to live like an infant, constantly amazed and challenged by a strange and unnamed world.
Not only is history written by the winners, it is also made by them.
That's the history of the world. His story is told, hers isn't.
I learned a history not then written in books but one passed from generation to generation on the steps of moonlit porches and beside dying fires in one-room houses, a history of great-grandparents and of slavery and of the days following slavery; of those who lived still not free, yet who would not let their spirits be enslaved.
The history of one is the history of all.
The forgetting of the history of marginalized groups is both a cause and effect of their marginalization.
The Declaration of Independence is the all-time masterpiece of ideological simplification. There in a single sentence of self-evident truth, the founding Fathers put into clear, easily understandable focus, the broad basis of man's relationship to God, to government, and to his fellow man.
I feel it is our inherent duty as a humane society, above any intangible responsibility, to invest in our world's children's potential, passion and confidence.
It is undeniable that others and the larger world, so beleaguered at this moment in history, need everything that we have to give. But what to give is the problem. It seems finally clear that we cannot find out what to do simply by thinking about it. We need to gain our inspiration and our direction from much deeper sources.
History repeats herself.
The student is to read history actively and not passively; to esteem his own life the text, and books the commentary. Thus compelled, the muse of history will utter oracles as never to those who do not respect themselves.
In the United States those bits of our history that remain are paved over, sanitized, packaged for easy consumption. At those sites not already lost to commercial development, we walk between velvet ropes, herded by guides, warned not to touch. Our icons are preserved under glass, their magic demystified in glossy brochures.
This is a very fickle and faithless generation.
How strangely is antiquity treated! To answer some purposes it is spoken of as the times of darkness and ignorance, and to answer others, it is put for the light of the world.
Good things don't come to those who wait. They come to those who agitate!
The whole point of society is to be less unforgiving than nature.
Never, ever rest on your laurels. Today's laurels are tomorrow's compost.
The thirst for equality can express itself either as a desire to draw everyone down to one's level, or to raise oneself and everyone else up.
We are raised to honor all the wrong explorers and discoverers thieves planting flags, murderers carrying crosses. Let us at last praise the colonizers of dreams.
Sport is a seductive metaphor (life as a game in which we gain victory through hard work, discipline, and visualizing success). but the older metaphor of farming (life as hard labor that is subject to weather and quirks of blind fate and may return no reward whatsoever and don't be surprised) is still in our blood.
Of course, it has never paid much.
One only has an adventure when one makes a mistake, but [as] my grandmother used to say: "You don't have to get out of trouble if you don't get into trouble."
Dead, we become the lumber of the world, And to that mass of matter shall be swept Where things destroyed with things unborn are kept.
As an editor, I must often tell writers that their stories "do not fit our present needs." But there are times when I want to reply: "Sir, I would not trust you to write a ransom note."
The way Bernard Shaw believes in himself is very refreshing in these atheistic days when so many people believe in no God at all.
Follow AzQuotes on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. Every day we present the best quotes! Improve yourself, find your inspiration, share with friends
or simply: