Historical Quotes - Page 31

• Actually, the only thing I regret is not making more underground films and bringing them with me as historical documents.

  Bahman Ghobadi

  Regret, Film, Documents

  4 Copy quote

• When I write I have no loyalty except to historical truth as I see it and care no more about British achievements and mistakes than any other.

  A. J. P. Taylor

  Loyalty, Mistake, Writing

  16 Copy quote

• Memory as an inversion of historical time is the essence of interiority.

  Emmanuel Levinas

  Memories, Essence, Inversions

  50 Copy quote

• The Bible writers didn't care that they were bunching together sequences some of which were historical, some preposterous, and some downright manipulative. Faithful recording was not their business; faith was.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Bible, Faith, Together

  4 Copy quote

• Rome is the city above all cities which loses most of its meaning to those who do not bring to it some historical sense, a decent knowledge of art, and a good amount of time. Rome therefore is particularly disturbing to an American.

  Clare Boothe Luce

  Art, Rome, Cities

  Clare Boothe Luce (1941). “European spring”

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• As a society in turmoil, we are going to see more, and more various, attempts to simulate order through repression; and art is a historical target for such efforts.

  Adrienne Rich

  Art, Order, Effort

  Adrienne Rich (2003). “What Is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics (Expanded Edition)”, p.133, W. W. Norton & Company

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• I always wanted to be historical, from almost a baby on, I felt that way about it.

  Gertrude Stein

  Baby, Ambition, Way

  Gertrude Stein (2012). “Selected Writings of Gertrude Stein”, p.7, Vintage

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Our dreams of bringing the whole of human history under the control of the human will are ironically refuted by the fact that no group of idealists can easily move the pattern of history toward the desired goal of peace and justice. The recalcitrant forces in the historical drama have a power and persistence beyond our reckoning.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Dream, Drama, Moving

  Reinhold Niebuhr (2015). “Reinhold Niebuhr: Major Works on Religion and Politics: (Library of America #263)”, p.551, Library of America

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• before one actually visits them, everyone tends to think of their favorite countries as one grand Disneyland filled with national monuments and historical treasures conveniently laid out for easy viewing, when what they really are filled with, of course, is people going to work, laundromats and places to buy rat poison.

  Bette Midler

  Country, Travel, Thinking

  Bette Midler (2014). “A View from A Broad”, p.54, Simon and Schuster

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• They [the critics] deal with Schoenberg's early works and all their wealth by classifying them, with the music-historical cliché, as late romantic post-Wagnerian. One might just as well dispose of Beethoven as a late-classicist post-Haydnerian.

  Theodor Adorno

  Might, Wealth, Late

  Theodor Adorno, Richard Leppert, Susan H. Gillespie (2002). “Essays on Music”, p.148, Univ of California Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• A woman's biography - with about eight famous historical exceptions - so often turns out to be the story of a man and the woman who helped his career.

  Catherine Drinker Bowen

  Women, Eight, Careers

  4 Copy quote

• In public buildings set aside for the care and maintenance of the goods of the middle ages, a staff of civil service art attendants praise all the dead, irrelevant scribblings and scrawlings that, at best, have only historical interest for idiots and layabouts.

  George Grosz

  Art, Age, Care

  George Grosz, Heartfield, Wieland Herzfelde (1987). “Art Is in Danger”

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• [My wife] liked to collect old encyclopedias from second-hand bookstores, and at one point we had eight of them. When I wrote my first historical novel---back in 1980, before I was online---I used them often as a research tool. For instance, I learned that the Bastille was either 90 feet high or 100 feet or 120 feet. This led me to formulate Wilson's 22nd Law: 'Certitude belongs exclusively to those who only look in one encyclopedia.'

  Robert Anton Wilson

  Feet, Eight, Historical Novels

  9 Copy quote

• I have rarely read a more wonderful book than To Win Her Favor by Tamera Alexander. Rich with historical detail and fully developed characters, this novel held me spellbound until the last page. If you read one historical novel this year, make it To Win Her Favor. It will linger with you long after the last page.

  Colleen Coble

  Book, Character, Winning

  4 Copy quote

• The 'inquests' which resulted in the compilation of the Domesday Book made a vivid and unfavorable impression on the country. A similar effect was produced by the inquests of 1166 and 1170, before alluded to. Even to this day, the word 'inquisitorial' bears the burden of historical unpopularity.

  Edward Jenks

  Country, Book, Vivid

  Edward Jenks (1922). “A Short History of English Law: From the Earliest Times to the End of the Year 1919”

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• I only did my duty to my country when I tried to oppose the criminal folly of Hitler.

  Wilhelm Canaris

  Country, Criminals, Duty

  "Admiral Canaris - Chief of Intelligence". Book by Ian Colvin, p. 210, 2007.

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• So our virtues lie in the interpretation of the time

  William Shakespeare

  Lying, Virtue, Interpretation

  William Shakespeare, Samuel Weller Singer, Edmond Malone, Charles Symmons, John Thompson (1826). “The Dramatic Works of William Shakespeare: Richard III. Henry VIII. Troilus and Cressida”, p.242

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• The House of Lords is like a glass of champagne that has stood for five days

  Clement Attlee

  Glasses, House, Lord

  10 Copy quote

• Swedes, we are not - Russians, we do not want to become ... so let us be Finnish.

  Adolf Ivar Arwidsson

  Want, Finnish

  7 Copy quote

• Idleness only leads to bad deeds

  Magnus Stenbock

  Deeds, Idleness

  7 Copy quote

• Due to the fact that I experienced personally the situation of a political prisoner, I have an historical commitment to all those that were or are prisoners just because they expressed their views, their public opinion, their own opinions.

  Dilma Rousseff

  Commitment, Views, Political

  "Dilma Rousseff: can Brazil's fighter survive the turmoil?" by Jonathan Watts and Bruce Douglas, www.theguardian.com. August 22, 2015.

  18 Copy quote

  Show source

• Education is a nation's cheapest defence

  Edmund Burke

  Defence, Nations

  5 Copy quote

• By the same right under which France took Flanders, Lorraine and Alsace, and will sooner or later take Belgium — by that same right Germany takes over Schleswig; it is the right of civilisation as against barbarism, of progress as against stability.

  Friedrich Engels

  Agreement, Civilization, Progress

  "Karl Marx, Frederick Engels: Collected Works".

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• If I have to be a soldier I must be a good one, anything else is unthinkable

  Wilfred Owen

  Soldier, Unthinkable, Ifs

  25 Copy quote

• History, in fact, is no more than a list of the crimes of humanity, human follies and accidents

  Edward Gibbon

  Humanity, Lists, Facts

  4 Copy quote