History Quotes - Page 38

• ... the history of the race, from infancy through its stages of barbarism, heathenism, civilization, and Christianity, is a process of suffering, as the lower principles of humanity are gradually subjected to the higher.

  Catharine Beecher

  Civilization, Race, Humanity

  Catharine Esther Beecher (1857). “Common Sense Applied to Religion: Or, The Bible and the People”, p.37

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• It is the minority that has stood in the vain of every moral conflict, and achieved all that is noble in the history of the world.

  John Bartholomew Gough

  War, Accomplishment, Achievement

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• Unlike modern military codes, ancient texts are almost never purposely misleading, purposely scrambled. ... indeed, literacy was so uncommon until classical times that the very writing of a message sufficed to keep it from almost everybody.

  E. J. W. Barber

  Military, Reading, Writing

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• The reverence for the Scriptures is an element of civilization, for thus has the history of the world been preserved, and is preserved.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Bible, Civilization, Elements

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations”, p.97

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• History is constantly repeating itself, making only such changes of programme as the growth of nations and centuries requires.

  James A. Garfield

  Growth, Century, Programmes

  Garfield, James A. (1882). “The works of James Abram Garfield. (2 Volumes) Volume 1”, p.23, Best Books on

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• If you write a post and put it on a blog, that's a historical document. If you change your template, then that entry looks completely different. It's the same words, but not the same meaning. This all depends on what historical questions that people will be asking and we can't know what they will want.

  Joshua Greenberg

  Writing, People, Historical

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• So here they are, the dog-faced soldiers, the regulars, the fifty-cents-a-day professionals riding the outposts of the nation, from Fort Reno to Fort Apache, from Sheridan to Stark. They were all the same. Men in dirty-shirt blue and only a cold page in the history books to mark their passing. But wherever they rode and whatever they fought for, that place became the United States.

  Frank Nugent

  Dog, Dirty, Book

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• While the scientist, on the one hand, is concerned with giving a faithful description of facts, on the other, he has the equally important task of construing them in relation to some explanatory conjecture. Similarly the historian has a double duty: both of reporting the past as nearly as possible as it passed or was lived through by men at the time (without doctoring up events to fit later developments or some more "enlightened reading" of them); and second, of interpreting their import in the light of a present hypothesis.

  Marie Taylor Collins Swabey

  Reading, Science, Past

  Marie Taylor Collins Swabey (1954). “The judgment of history”

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• My challenge was to weave into the fabric of American history enough of the presence of blacks so that the story of the United States could be told adequately and fairly.

  John Hope Franklin

  Inspirational, Motivational, Challenges

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• Who doesn't know that the first law of history is not to dare to say anything false, and the second is not to refrain from saying anything true?

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Inspirational, Motivational, Law

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• A battle sometimes decides everything; and sometimes the most trifling thing decides the fate of a battle.

  Napoleon Bonaparte

  Fate, Battle, Sometimes

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• Progress needs the brakeman, but the brakeman should not spend all his time putting on the brakes.

  Elbert Hubbard

  Progress, Needs, Should

  Elbert Hubbard, Bert Hubbard (1923). “Selected writings of Elbert Hubbard: his mintage of wisdom, coined from a life of love, laughter and work”

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• I know what I say at times is not very diplomatic.

  Nikita Khrushchev

  Diplomatic, Knows

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• We will be remembered not for the power of our weapons but for the power of our compassion, our dedication to human welfare.

  Hubert H. Humphrey

  Compassion, Dedication, Weapons

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• In western civilization, the period ruled by mysticism is known as the 'Dark Ages' and the 'Middle Ages'. I will assume that you know the nature of that period and the state of human existence in those ages. The Renaissance broke the rules of the mystics. "Renaissance" means the "rebirth". Few people today will care to remind you that it was a rebirth of reason - of man's mind.

  Ayn Rand

  Mean, Dark, Men

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• We must ever mandate the principle that the people of this continent alone have the right to decide their own destiny.

  James K. Polk

  Destiny, People, Principles

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• For more than half a century... this Union has stood unshaken. Whatever dangers may threaten it, I shall stand by it and maintain it in its integrity to the full extent of the obligations imposed and the powers conferred upon me by the Constitution.

  Zachary Taylor

  Integrity, Half, Unions

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• In expressing briefly my views upon an important subject which has recently agitated the nation..., I fervently hope that the question is at rest and that no sectional or ambitious or fanatical excitement may again threaten the durability of our institutions.

  Franklin Pierce

  Views, Important, Ambitious

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• If we fail now, then we will have forgotten in abundance what we learned in hardship: that democracy rests on faith; freedom asks more than it gives; and the judgment of God is harshest on those who are most favored.

  Lyndon B. Johnson

  Giving, Democracy, Hardship

  Inaugural Address, delivered 20 January 1965

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• The peace we seek to win is not victory over any other people, but the peace that comes "with healing in its wings;" with compassion for those who have suffered; with understanding for those who have opposed us; with the opportunity for all the peoples of this Earth to choose their own destiny.

  Richard M. Nixon

  Healing, Winning, Opportunity

  Nixon, Richard M. (1971). “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Richard M. Nixon, 1969”, p.4, Best Books on

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• Mr. Chamberlain loves the working man, he loves to see him work.

  Winston Churchill

  Men, Working Man, Chamberlain

  Winston Churchill (2001). “The Wicked Wit of Winston Churchill”, Michael O'Mara Books

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• Materially we must strive to secure a broader economic opportunity for all men, so that each shall have a better chance to show the stuff of which he is made.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Opportunity, Men, Stuff

  The Man with the Muck-rake, delivered 14 April 1906

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• But without Adolf Hitler, who was possessed of a demonic personality, a granite will, uncanny instincts, a cold ruthlessness, a remarkable intellect, a soaring imagination and - until the end, when, drunk with power and success, he overreached himself - an amazing capacity to size up people and situations, there almost certainly would never have been a Third Reich.

  William L. Shirer

  Drunk, Imagination, People

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• They died hard, those savage men - like wounded wolves at bay. They were filthy, and they were lousy, and they stunk. And I loved them.

  Douglas MacArthur

  Love, Men, Age

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• I was alive when the Dead Sea was just a lake that was feeling a little poorly.

  Cassandra Clare

  Lakes, Sea, Feelings

  Cassandra Clare (2009). “City of Ashes”, p.281, Simon and Schuster

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