Historical Quotes - Page 27

• These are the times for which we were born.

  David Spangler

  Destiny, Born

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• We need a war every 10 years, so we can stay match fit in case the Germans try again.

  Al Murray

  War, Years, History

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• I think deep down, this planet yearns for the days of the British Empire again. They long once more to be treated that badly, that politely. We did far worse things than you can possibly dream of, but we did it with that certainly gentlemanly swagger... Dreadfully sorry, but we seem to have crushed your entire continent's infrastructure. Allow me to make it up to you by offering you a job 4,000 miles away. No, no, I insist.

  John Oliver

  Dream, Jobs, Sorry

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• The midwife of history is violence.

  Franz Joseph I of Austria

  History, Violence, Humour

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• Great abilities are not requisite for an Historian; for in historical composition, all the greatest powers of the human mind are quiescent. He has facts ready to his hand; so there is no exercise of invention. Imagination is not required in any degree; only about as much as is used in the lowest kinds of poetry. Some penetration, accuracy, and coloring, will fit a man for the task, if he can give the application which is necessary.

  Samuel Johnson

  Exercise, Men, Hands

  James Boswell, Samuel Johnson, Edmond Malone (1824). “The life of Samuel Johnson, LL. D., comprehending an account of his studies, and numerous works, in chronological order: a series of his epistolary correspondence and conversations with many eminent persons; and various original pieces of his composition, never before published; the whole exhibiting a view of literature and literary men in Great Britain, for near half a century during which he flourished”, p.373

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• Western civilization, because of fortuitous historical circumstances, has spread itself more widely than any other local group that has so far been known.

  Ruth Benedict

  Civilization, Groups, Circumstances

  Ruth Benedict (1973). “Patterns of Culture”, p.30, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The felt unreliability of human experience brought about by the inhuman acceleration of historical change has led every sensitive modern mind to the recording of some kind of nausea, of intellectual vertigo.

  Susan Sontag

  Change, Intellectual, Mind

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• Historical experience is written in blood and iron.

  Mao Zedong

  Blood, Iron, History

  Mao Tse-Tung, Zedong Mao (1961). “On Guerrilla Warfare”, p.27, University of Illinois Press

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• For everything is history: What was said yesterday is history, what was said a minute ago is history. But, above all, one is led to misjudge the present, because only the study of historical development permits the weighing and evaluation of the interrelationships among the components of the present-day society.

  Claude Levi-Strauss

  Yesterday, Development, Evaluation

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• Jewish persecution is a historical memory of the present generation and people fear it in the present day, and that's why those references are so much more powerful. I just understand that better now.

  Gregg Easterbrook

  Memories, Powerful, People

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• I am the very model of a modern Major-General, I've information vegetable, animal, and mineral, I know the kings of England, and I quote the fights historical, From Marathon to Waterloo, in order categorical.

  W. S. Gilbert

  Kings, Military, Fighting

  The Pirates of Penzance act 1 (1879)

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• I've always loved comic books. As a kid, I used to read cowboy stories and historical comics about other worlds, unknown places that would take me out of myself and which helped to develop my imagination.

  James Herbert

  Book, Kids, Cowboy

  "Cultureshock: Novelist James Herbert and daughter Casey exchange experiences". www.theguardian.com. October 7, 2006.

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• All societies are historical.

  Raymond Queneau

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• These pictures possibly give rise to questions of political content or historical truth. Neither interests me in this instance. And although even my motivation for painting them is probably of no significance, I am trying to put a name to it here, as an articulation, parallel to the pictures, as it were, of my disquiet and of my opinion.

  Gerhard Richter

  Art, Motivation, Names

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• The historical religions have the tendency to become ends in themselves, and, as it were, to put themselves in God's place, and, in fact, there is nothing that is so apt to obscure God's face as a religion.

  Martin Buber

  Religion, Faces, Facts

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• The fourth landing of the Columbia is the historical equivalent of the driving of the golden spike which completed the first transcontinental railroad. It marks our entrance into a new era.

  Ronald Reagan

  Moon, Railroads, Golden

  United States. President (1981-1989 : Reagan), United States. President (1981-1989 : Reagan)., Ronald Reagan, United States. Office of the Federal Register (1983). “Ronald Reagan”

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• The critical principle demanded an examination, for instance, of the contribution of different periods, thus to some extent embarking on historical linguistics.

  Ferdinand de Saussure

  Principles, Different, Examination

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• That the apostolic office is temporary, is a plain historical fact.

  Charles Hodge

  Office, Facts, Apostolic

  Charles Hodge (1855). “What is Presbyterianism?: An Address Delivered Before the Presbyterian Historical Society at Their Anniversary Meeting in Philadelphia, on Tuesday Evening, May 1, 1855”, p.60

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• What would it mean if there were a theory that explained everything? And just what does "everything" actually mean, anyway? Would this new theory in physics explain, say the meaning of human poetry? Or how economics work? Or the stages of psychosexual development? Can this new physics explain the currents of ecosystems, or the dynamics of history, or why human wars are so terribly common?

  Ken Wilber

  War, Mean, Ecosystems

  Ken Wilber (2001). “A Theory of Everything: An Integral Vision for Business, Politics, Science and Spirituality”, p.11, Shambhala Publications

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• An active propaganda machinery controlled bv the world's largest corporations constantly reassures us that consumerism is the path to happiness, governmental restraint of market excess is the cause our distress, and economic globalization is both a historical inevitability and a boon to the human species.

  David Korten

  Growth, Causes, Economic Globalization

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• I'd love to do historical pictures more, but I don't know if I can.

  Oliver Stone

  Knows, Ifs, I Can

  "Featured filmmaker: Oliver Stone" by Stax, www.ign.com. November 17, 2003.

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• "Playing" the resources of characterology for the sake of clarification and insight into the structures of actual existence is many times more daunting than playing a piano; it requires the thinking of chords of thoughts, not just isolated simplisms or abstracta; it demands the shaping or encompassing of morphological modes of intelligence that can comprehend gestalten, syndromes, historical and civilizational patterns in which it is not the particulars but their interactive significance (as an ensemble of actualities or principles) that is vital.

  Kenny Smith

  Philosophy, Thinking, Piano

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• The thing people forget when they are looking for solutions is there is nothing final in history.

  Amira Hass

  People, Finals, Forget

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• Just because a company falls doesn't invalidate what we can learn by studying that company when it was at its historical best.

  James C. Collins

  Fall, Study, Company

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• One very important aspect of our contemporary musical culture - some might say the supremely important aspect - is its extension in the historical and geographical senses to a degree unknown in the past.

  George Crumb

  Past, Musical, Important

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