Historical Quotes - Page 26

• History distinguishes what is accidental and transitory in human nature from what is essential and immutable.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Essentials, Human Nature, Insight

  John Morley, Thomas B. Macaulay (2016). “Machiavelli : the Founder of the Political”, p.66, Editions Le Mono

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• History, if thoroughly comprehended, furnishes something of the experience which a man would acquire who should be a contemporary of all ages and a fellow citizen of all peoples.

  Philibert Joseph Roux

  Men, Age, Citizens

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• The line-by-line, sequential, continuous form of the printed page slowly began to lose its resonance as a metaphor of how knowledge was to be acquired and how the world was to be understood. "Knowing" the facts took on a new meaning, for it did not imply that one understood implications, background, or connections. Telegraphic discourse permitted no time for historical perspectives and gave no priority to the qualitative. To the telegraph, intelligence meant knowing of lots of things, not knowing about them.

  Neil Postman

  Knowing, Perspective, Priorities

  Neil Postman (2005). “Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business”, p.70, Penguin

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• In questions of law or of fact conscience is very often confounded with opinion. No man's conscience can tell him the rights of another man; they must be known by rational investigation or historical inquiry.

  Samuel Johnson

  Wisdom, Men, Rights

  Samuel Johnson, Arthur Murphy (1832). “The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL. D.: With an Essay on His Life and Genius”, p.587

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• We're not going to waste our valuable space or your precious energy by giving equal time to stories of tragedy, failure, and tumult. They get far more that their fair share of attention everywhere else. Future historians might even conclude that our age suffered from a collective obsessive-compulsive disorder: the pathological need to repetitively seek out reasons for how bad life is.

  Rob Brezsny

  Media, Space, Giving

  Rob Brezsny (2005). “Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings”, p.66, Frog Books

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• Too many historical writers are the votaries of cults, which, by definition are dedicated to whitewashing warts and hanging halos.

  Thomas A. Bailey

  History, Halos, Definitions

  Thomas A. Bailey (1969). “Essays Diplomatic and Undiplomatic of Thomas A. Bailey”, p.15, Ardent Media

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• The amazing thing since so many variables enter into historical judgments, is not that historians disagree but that they agree as often as they do.

  Louis Moreau Gottschalk

  History, Variables, Judgment

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• That said, there are certainly still cooks out there who make fantastic historical cornbreads, though the old recipes have often been changed to include modern techniques and ingredients.

  Jeremy Jackson

  Technique, Recipes, Ingredients

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• I feel like it's hard to get into historical novels where you know what the story is far too well.

  Matthew Tobin Anderson

  Historical Novels, Stories, Wells

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• Many novelists take well-defined, precise characters, whose stories are sometimes of mediocre interest, and place them in an important historical context, which remains secondary in spite of everything.

  Raymond Queneau

  Character, Important, Novelists

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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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• No one writes better historical fiction than Steven Pressfield. The Afghan War that was waged by Alexander the Great 2000 years ago is eerily similar to the one that's being fought today. This book should be required reading for anyone who wants to better understand what American and Coalition forces are up against in one of history's most tribal and troubled regions.

  Vince Flynn

  War, Reading, Book

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• I was with the U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali on the day that Srebrenica fell, which happened to be a huge historical turning point in the Bosnian war.

  Michael Ignatieff

  War, Bosnians, Happened

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• The question for the ultimate foundations and the ultimate meaning of mathematics remains open; we do not know in which direction it will find its final solution nor even whether a final objective answer can be expected at all. "Mathematizing" may well be a creative activity of man, like language or music, of primary originality, whose historical decisions defy complete objective rationalization.

  Hermann Weyl

  Men, Discovery, Decision

  Hermann Weyl (2013). “Levels of Infinity: Selected Writings on Mathematics and Philosophy”, p.88, Courier Corporation

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• I love writing Christmas stories, especially of the historical variety.

  Linda Lael Miller

  Writing, Stories, Variety

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• The erasure itself became the action. It seemed to suggest a moment in terms of how sad or pessimistic you can feel in a political environment or a historical situation. But it felt like a really hopeful gesture in the painting.

  Julie Mehretu

  Hopeful, Political, Pessimistic

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• There is no nobler profession, nor no greater calling, than to be among those unheralded many who gave and give their lives to the preservation of human knowledge, passed with commitment and care from one generation to the next.

  Laurence Overmire

  Future, Commitment, Giving

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• Christians aren't making a religious claim when they say Jesus rose from the grave. They're making a historical one; they're saying that this thing happened just as surely and really as it happened that Julius Caesar became emperor of Rome. It's the kind of claim that can be thought about and investigated; it can be judged.

  Greg Gilbert

  Christian, Religious, Jesus

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• Even as regards Earth we are more committed to history than to geography, more committed to time than to space. History is endless. Place is limited.

  Thomas Berry

  Space, Earth, Geography

  Thomas Berry (2011). “The Great Work: Our Way into the Future”, p.92, Crown

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• Jesus was a white man, too. Its like we have, hes a historical figure thats a verifiable fact, as is Santa, I just want kids to know that. How do you revise it in the middle of the legacy in the story and change Santa from white to black?

  Megyn Kelly

  Jesus, Kids, Men

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• The success or failure of any historical age is the extent to which those living at that time have fulfilled the special role that history has imposed upon them.

  Thomas Berry

  Success, Special, Age

  Thomas Berry (2011). “The Great Work: Our Way into the Future”, p.7, Crown

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• The random quantum fluctuations of my brain are historical accidents that happen to have decided that the concepts of dynamic scoping and lexical scoping are orthogonal and should remain that way.

  Larry Wall

  Brain, Way, Quantum

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• You have delivered up our holy German Fatherland to one of the greatest demagogues of all time. I solemnly prophesy that this accursed man will cast our Reich into the abyss and bring our nation to inconceivable misery. Future generations will damn you in your grave for what you have done.

  Ian Kershaw

  Men, Damn You, Generations

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• There are so many stories to tell in the worlds of science fiction, the worlds of fantasy and horror that to confine yourself to even doing historical revisionist fiction, whatever you want to call it - mash-ups, gimmick lit, absurdist fiction - I don't know if I want to do that anymore.

  Seth Grahame-Smith

  Fiction, Stories, World

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• A historical property has morals and ethics of the society that created it and it can be revived. What I mean is that we can discover new possibilities from the process of dismantling, transforming, and recreating.

  Ai Weiwei

  Mean, Ethics, Moral

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