History Quotes - Page 39

• Great is the guilt of an unnecessary war.

  John Adams

  Peace, War, Guilt

  John Adams (1856). “The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations”, p.474

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• My country has contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived.

  John Adams

  Country, Men, Imagination

  John Adams (1841). “Letters, Addressed to His Wife”, p.133

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to the human soul.

  Joseph Addison

  Motivational, Inspiring, Education

  The Spectator, No. 215, November 6, 1711.

  41 Copy quote

  Show source

• I declare to you that woman must not depend upon the protection of man, but must be taught to protect herself, and there I take my stand.

  Susan B. Anthony

  Inspirational, Sad, Women

  128 Copy quote

• Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.

  Aristotle

  Philosophical, Poetry, Historical

  "Poetics". Book by Aristotle, 1451b, 6, 335 BCE.

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• All music is folk music. I ain't never heard a horse sing a song.

  Louis Armstrong

  Funny, Music, Song

  Quoted in N.Y. Times, 7 July 1971

  90 Copy quote

  Show source

• History is, strictly speaking, the study of questions; the study of answers belongs to anthropology and sociology.

  W. H. Auden

  Answers, Study, Sociology

  37 Copy quote

• Music is the best means we have of digesting time.

  W. H. Auden

  Music, Art, Philosophy

  Quoted in Robert Craft Stravinsky: Chronicle of a Friendship (1972).

  48 Copy quote

  Show source

• Before people complain of the obscurity of modern poetry, they should first examine their consciences and ask themselves with how many people and on how many occasions they have genuinely and profoundly shared some experience with another...

  W. H. Auden

  People, Firsts, Complaining

  "The Dyer's Hand". "The Listener" Magazine, June 30, 1955.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• The soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts.

  Marcus Aurelius

  Inspirational, Philosophical, Thinking

  20 Copy quote

• He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils; for time is the greatest innovator.

  Francis Bacon

  Change, Time, Acceptance

  'Essays' (1625) 'Of Innovations'

  22 Copy quote

  Show source

• Life is a school of probability.

  Walter Bagehot

  Life, Art, Philosophy

  Quoted in Rudolf Flesch's The New Book of Unusual Quotations

  31 Copy quote

  Show source

• The best history is but like the art of Rembrandt; it casts a vivid light on certain selected causes, on those which were best and greatest; it leaves all the rest in shadow and unseen.

  Walter Bagehot

  Art, Light, Shadow

  Walter Bagehot (2010). “Physics and Politics: Or Thoughts on the Application of the Principles of Natural Selection and Inheritance to Political Society”, p.62, Cambridge University Press

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Let us never forget this: since the day of the air, the old frontiers are gone. When you think of the defense of England you no longer think of the chalk cliffs of Dover; you think of the Rhine. That is where our frontier lies.

  Stanley Baldwin

  Lying, Thinking, Air

  Hansard 30 July 1934, col. 2339

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• How I Love Lucy was born? We decided that instead of divorce lawyers profiting from our mistakes, we'd profit from them.

  Lucille Ball

  Love, Mistake, Divorce

  10 Copy quote

• I have an almost complete disregard of precedent, and a faith in the possibility of something better. It irritates me to be told how things have always been done. I defy the tyranny of precedent. I go for anything new that might improve the past.

  Clara Barton

  Success, Nursing, Past

  184 Copy quote

• If it were possible to talk to the unborn, one could never explain to them how it feels to be alive, for life is washed in the speechless real.

  Jacques Barzun

  Art, Philosophy, Real

  The House of Intellect ch. 6 (1959)

  65 Copy quote

  Show source

• Any man who does not accept the conditions of life sells his soul.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Life, Men, Rejection

  Charles Baudelaire (1925). “Les fleurs de mal: Petits poèmes en prose, Les paradis artificiels”

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• The world's battlefields have been in the heart chiefly; more heroism has been displayed in the household and the closet, than on the most memorable battlefields in history.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Memorable, Heart, World

  54 Copy quote

• What the hell difference does it make, left or right? There were good men lost on both sides.

  Brendan Behan

  Men, Differences, Good Man

  Brendan Behan (2014). “Behan Complete Plays”, p.210, Bloomsbury Publishing

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Conquered people tend to be witty.

  Saul Bellow

  Witty, Art, Philosophy

  1969 Mr Sammler's Planet, ch.2.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Racism is an ism to which everyone in the world today is exposed; for or against, we must take sides. And the history of the future will differ according to the decision which we make.

  Ruth Benedict

  Racism, Decision, Racist

  Ruth Benedict (1945). “Race: Science and Politics”, Viking Adult

  15 Copy quote

  Show source

• There are some people who, if they don't already know, you can't tell 'em.

  Yogi Berra

  Inspirational, Sports, Science

  7 Copy quote

• Friendship is a word, the very sight of which in print makes the heart warm.

  Augustine Birrell

  Friendship, Heart, Sight

  Augustine Birrell (1922). “The Collected Essays & Addresses of the Rt. Hon. Augustine Birrell, 1880-1920 ...”

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Do what you will this life's a fiction, And is made up of contradiction.

  William Blake

  Fiction, World, Contradiction

  "The Selected Poems of William Blake".

  193 Copy quote

  Show source