History Quotes - Page 19

• Making fun of philosophy is really philosophising.

  Blaise Pascal

  Art, Fun, Philosophy

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• We can stand only a certain amount of unhappiness; anything beyond that annihilates us or passes us by, leaving us apathethetic.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Art, Philosophy, Leaving

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• Selfness is an essential fact of life. The thought of nonselfness, precise sameness is terrifying.

  Lewis Thomas

  Art, Philosophy, Essentials

  Lewis Thomas (1990). “A Long Line of Cells Collected Essays”

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• ...scientific power is like inherited wealth: attained without discipline. You read what others have done, and you take the next step. You can do it very young...there is no mastery, old scientists are ignored. There is no humility before nature...Its a form of inherited wealth. And you know what assholes congenitally rich people are.

  Michael Crichton

  Humility, Discipline, People

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• Sin writes histories, goodness is silent.
  [Ger., Das Uebel macht eine Geschichte und das Gute keine.]

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Writing, Sin, Silent

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• The mystery of history is an insoluble problem.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Mystery, Problem

  Henry Ward Beecher (1871). “Plymouth Pulpit: A Weekly Publication of Sermons Preached by Henry Ward Beecher”, p.469

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• History is clarified experience.

  James Russell Lowell

  James Russell Lowell (1910). “Literary and political addresses”

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• Very often history is a means of denying the past.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Mean, Past

  Jeanette Winterson (2007). “Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit”, p.93, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• The history of the past is a mere puppet-show. A little man comes out and blows a little trumpet, and goes in again. You look for something new, and lo! another little man comes out, and blows another little trumpet, and goes in again. And it is all over.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Men, Blow, Past

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1886). “The Prose Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Outre Mer and Driftwood”

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• For girls and women, storytelling has a double and triple importance. Because the stories of our lives have been marginalized and ignored by history, and often dismissed and treated as 'gossip' within our own cultures and families, female human beings are more likely to be discouraged from telling our stories and from listening to each other with seriousness.

  Gloria Steinem

  Girl, Gossip, Listening

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• History is not a book, arbitrarily divided into chapters, or a drama chopped into separate acts; it has flowed forward. Rome is a continuity, called 'eternal.' What has accumulated in this place acts on everyone, day and night, like an extra climate.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Drama, Book, Night

  Elizabeth Bowen (2015). “A Time In Rome”, p.10, Random House

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• Thou two-faced year, Mother of Change and Fate...

  Emma Lazarus

  Mother, Fate, Years

  Emma Lazarus (2014). “The Poems of Emma Lazarus, Volume II: Jewish Poems and Translations”, p.22, Courier Corporation

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• it is not the inferiority of women that has caused their historical insignificance; it is rather their historical insignificance that has doomed them to inferiority.

  Simone de Beauvoir

  Women, Historical, Inferiority

  Simone de Beauvoir (1953). “The second sex”, Vintage

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• History is a great cemetery: men, deeds, ideas are always dying as soon as they are born.

  Simone de Beauvoir

  Men, Ideas, Dying

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• History is a game played backwards only.

  Marge Piercy

  Games, Backwards

  Marge Piercy (2013). “Circles on the Water”, p.129, Knopf

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• by operating on the principle of human and material obsolescence, America eats her history alive.

  Gail Sheehy

  America, Principles, United States

  Gail Sheehy (1971). “Speed is of the Essence”, Richmond Hill, Ont. : Simon & Schuster of Canada

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• History is not written in the interests of morality.

  Agnes Repplier

  Morality, Interest, Written

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• If history in the making be a fluid thing, it swiftly crystallizes.

  Agnes Repplier

  Fluid, Ifs

  Agnes Repplier (1920). “Points of Friction”

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• History is, and has always been trameled by facts. It may ignore some and deny others; but it cannot accommodate itself unreservedly to theories; it cannot be stripped of things evidenced in favor of things surmised.

  Agnes Repplier

  May, Facts, Favors

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• It's rare that we actively and consciously 'forget'; most of the time we have simply forgotten, with no consciousness of having forgotten. In individuals, the phenomenon is called 'denial'; in entire cultures and nations, it's usually called 'history.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Denial, Culture, Forget

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• Official history is a matter of believing murderers on their own word.

  Simone Weil

  Believe, Matter, Murderer

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• The trouble with American History is that you don't remember it, and why should you? Nobody does.

  Barbara Holland

  Doe, Remember, Trouble

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• If history is really relevant in today's world, the proposition doesn't command much respect. Perhaps the past is a different country, but if so no one much wants to travel there.

  Elizabeth Janeway

  Country, Past, Different

  Elizabeth Janeway (1987). “Improper behavior”, William Morrow

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• If every nation gets the government it deserves, every generation writes the history which corresponds with its view of the world.

  Elizabeth Janeway

  Writing, Government, Views

  Elizabeth Janeway (1974). “Between Myth and Morning: Women Awakening”, New York : Morrow, 1974, 1975 printing.

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• The truth of history crowds out the truth of fiction - as if one were obliged to choose between them.

  Susan Sontag

  Fiction, Crowds, Obliged

  Susan Sontag (2007). “At the Same Time: Essays and Speeches”, p.92, Macmillan

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