Written History Quotes

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  This is one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.

  Neil Armstrong

  Motivational, Positive, Moon

  In New York Times 31 July 1969, p. 20

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• History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.

  Winston Churchill

  Inspirational, Positive, Badass

  71 Copy quote

• The very ink with which history is written is merely fluid prejudice.

  Mark Twain

  Sad, Writing History, Historical

  Mark Twain (2015). “Bite-Size Twain: Wit and Wisdom from the Literary Legend”, p.54, St. Martin's Press

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• What is history but a fable agreed upon?

  Napoleon Bonaparte

  Time, Memories, Writing History

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• History is a cyclic poem written by time upon the memories of man.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Memories, Men, History

  "A Defence of Poetry" by Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1821.

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• Anybody can make history; only a great man can write it.

  Oscar Wilde

  Writing, Greatness, Men

  Intentions "The Critic as Artist" pt. 1 (1891)

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• Even the written history [of Abraham Lincoln's times] is poorly understood by most people.

  George Saunders

  People, Abraham, Understood

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• The history of human use of plants, mushrooms, and animals for their psychedelic effects is far older than written history, and probably predates the appearance of the modern human species.

  Rick Strassman

  Animal, Mushrooms, Use

  Rick Strassman, M.D. (2000). “DMT: The Spirit Molecule: A Doctor's Revolutionary Research into the Biology of Near-Death and Mystical Experiences”, p.21, Inner Traditions / Bear & Co

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• My whole written history is one big lie! I mean, I can't even believe my history.

  Dennis Hopper

  Lying, Believe, Mean

  Dennis Hopper, Nick Dawson (2012). “Dennis Hopper: Interviews”, p.174, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• There is something eternal in the very nature of writing, as is so graphically illustrated by the scriptures themselves. In a very real sense, our properly written histories are a very important part of our family scripture and become a great source of spiritual strength to us and to our posterity

  John H. Groberg

  Spiritual, Real, Writing

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• Although it is tempting to imagine an ancient era innocent of biochemical weaponry, in fact this Pandora's box of horrors was opened thousands of years ago. The history of making war with biological weapons begins in mythology, in ancient oral traditions that preserved records of actual events and ideas of the era before the invention of written histories.

  Adrienne Mayor

  War, Ideas, Years

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• here are the top three global resources getting scarcer in the twenty-first century: ozone layer, rain forest, people eager to read the fiction of others. That's right, folks. For the first time in I believe written history, there are far more fiction writers on earth than fiction readers.

  Sandra Tsing Loh

  Book, Reading, Rain

  Sandra Tsing Loh (2002). “A Year in Van Nuys”, Three Rivers Press

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• I have never seen an adequate description anywhere of the amazement, the uncomprehending horror of the bulk of the American people which preceded the firing of that gun at Sumter. Politicians or far-sighted leaders on both sides knew what was coming. And it is they who have written histories of the war. But to the easy-going millions, busied with their farms or shops, the onrushing disaster was as inexplicable as an earthquake. Their protest arose from sea to sea like the clamor of a gigantic hive of frightened bees.

  Rebecca Harding Davis

  War, Gun, Sea

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• Whole great chunks of written history are of little value to the psychohistorian, while other vast areas which have been much neglected by historians - childhood history, content analysis of historical imagery, and so on - suddenly expand from the periphery to the center of the psychohistorian's conceptual world, simply because his or her own new questions require material nowhere to be found in history books.

  Lloyd deMause

  Book, Childhood, Historical

  "Foundations of Psychohistory". Book by Lloyd deMause, 1982.

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• Written history may, in the course of its narrative, use some of the laws established by the various sciences, but its own task remains that of relating the essential sequence of historical action and, qua history, to tell what happened, not why.

  Lloyd deMause

  Law, Historical, Essentials

  Lloyd DeMause (1975). “The New Psychohistory”, New York : Psychohistory Press

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• I think we fool ourselves and really negate a great deal of history if we think that the oral history of poetry is shorter than the written history of poetry. It's not true. Poetry has a longer oral tradition than it does written

  Saul Williams

  Thinking, Doe, Oral Tradition

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• The written history of the world is largely a history of warfare, because the states within which we live came into existence largely through conquest, civil strife, or struggles for independence.

  John Keegan

  War, Struggle, Independence

  John Keegan (2012). “A History of Warfare”, p.886, Vintage

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