Historical Quotes - Page 15

• Man is an historical animal, with a deep sense of his own past; and if he cannot integrate the past by a history explicit and true, he will integrate it by a history implicit and false.

  Geoffrey Barraclough

  Animal, Past, Men

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• Silences enter the process of historical production at four crucial moments: the moment of fact creation (the making of sources); the moment of fact assembly (the making of archives); the moment of fact retrieval (the making of narratives); and the moment of retrospective significance (the making of history in the final instance).

  Michel-Rolph Trouillot

  Silence, Archives, Finals

  Michel-Rolph Trouillot (2015). “Silencing the Past (20th anniversary edition): Power and the Production of History”, p.26, Beacon Press

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• Any Southern nationalist movement, especially one that wraps itself in the Confederate flag, is going to be viewed with suspicion, given the historical record.

  John Shelton Reed

  Southern, Flags, Records

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• On the basis of my historical experience, I fully believe that mathematics of the 25th century will be as different from that of today as the latter is from that of the 16th century.

  George Sarton

  Believe, Different, Today

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• False history gets made all day, any day, the truth of the new is never on the news.

  Adrienne Rich

  New Day, News, Made

  Adrienne Rich (1993). “A Wild Patience Has Taken Me This Far: Poems 1978-1981”, p.2, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Millar Burrows of Yale observes: 'Archeology has in many cases refuted the views of modern critics. It has shown in a number of instances that these views rest on false assumptions and unreal, artificial schemes of historical development. This is a real contribution and not to be minimized.'

  Millar Burrows

  Real, Yale, Views

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• All historical writing, even the most honest, is unconsciously subjective, since every age is bound, in spite of itself, to make the dead perform whatever tricks it finds necessary for its own peace of mind.

  Carl L. Becker

  Writing, Mind, Age

  "The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth-Century Philosophers". Book by Carl L. Becker (Chapter II, pp. 43-44), 1932.

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• Susanne Alleyn's Game of Patience is a well-crafted historical mystery, authentic in every detail. Wonderfully entertaining.

  Sandra Gulland

  Games, Details, Mystery

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• My friend Ronald Gottesman says...that the cause of all our trouble is the belief in an essential, pure identity: religious, ethnic, historical, ideological.

  Chris Abani

  Religious, Identity, Essentials

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• Forgetfulness, and I would even say historical error, are essential in the creation of a nation.

  Ernest Renan

  Errors, Essentials, Creation

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• It is of course the nature of historical contraction that the shortest distance to a historical destination is never a straight line.

  Ibrahim Babangida

  Distance, Lines, Destination

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• Perhaps our Irish friends should not so completely turn their backs on their historical dishes, no matter how many jokes they might have to endure.

  Nick Clooney

  Might, Matter, Should

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• A tax-supported, compulsory educational system is the complete model of the totalitarian state.

  Isabel Paterson

  Education, Liberty, Libertarian

  Isabel Paterson (1993). “God of the Machine”, p.258, Transaction Publishers

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• Men had better be without education than be educated by their rulers; for their education is but the mere breaking in of the steer to the yoke; the mere discipline of the hunting dog, which, by dint of severity, is made to forego the strongest impulse of his nature, and instead of devouring his prey, to hasten with it to the feet of his master.

  Thomas Hodgskin

  Dog, Men, Hunting

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• We need a type of theatre which not only releases the feelings, insights and impulses possible within the particular historical field of human relations in which the action takes place, but employs and encourages those thoughts and feelings which help transform the field itself.

  Bertolt Brecht

  Feelings, Theatre, Needs

  Bertolt Brecht, John Willett (1964). “Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic”

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• Just now one of the significant historical roles of the primal people of the world is not simply to sustain their own traditions, but call the entire civilized world back to a more authentic mode of being.

  Thomas Berry

  People, Roles, World

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• All typefaces are historical.

  Jonathan Hoefler

  Design, Typography, Typefaces

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• No military timetable should compel war when a successful outcome, namely a disarmed Iraq may be feasible without war, for example by allowing more time to the UN inspectors.

  Douglas Hurd

  Military, War, Successful

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• The entire Islamic world condemned Iran. Nowadays, because of the unwarranted invasion of Iraq by Bush and Blair, which was a completely unjust adventure based on misleading statements, and the lack of any effort to resolve the Palestinian issue, there is massive Islamic condemnation of the United States.

  Jimmy Carter

  War, Islamic, Adventure

  "Mr President for good" by Oliver Burkeman, www.theguardian.com. October 25, 2004.

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• NATO needs to adapt its strategy to meet new challenges

  Angela Merkel

  War, Challenges, Needs

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• I don't really have a historical overview of my work at all. I'm not an art historian. I don't see that there's this period and that period.

  Howard Hodgkin

  Art, Periods, Historian

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• It is our misfortune, as a historical generation, to live through the largest expansion in expressive capability in human history, a misfortune because abundance breaks more things than scarcity.

  Clay Shirky

  Expansion, Generations, Scarcity

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• I expressed skepticism, in the first chapter, about the utility of time machines in historical research. I especially advised against graduate students relying on them, because of the limited perspective you tend to get from being plunked down in some particular part of the past, and the danger of not getting back in time for your orals.

  John Lewis Gaddis

  Past, Perspective, Machines

  John Lewis Gaddis (2004). “The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past”, p.22, Oxford University Press, USA

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• I enjoyed studying costume, learning about the corsetry and the historical context of fashion. I never had any real intention of being a costume designer.

  Georgina Chapman

  Fashion, Real, Costumes

  "Georgina Chapman Interview: Red-Carpet Royalty" by Derek Blasberg, www.harpersbazaar.com. March 21, 2011.

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• Considering that virtually none of the standard fare surrounding Thanksgiving contains an ounce of authenticity, historical accuracy, or cross-cultural perception, why is it so apparently ingrained? Is it necessary to the American psyche to perpetually exploit and debase its victims in order to justify its history?

  Michael Dorris

  Order, Perception, Authenticity

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