World History Quotes - Page 11

• In spite of overwhelming evidence, it is most difficult for a citizen of western Europe to bring thoroughly home to himself the truth that the civilisation which surrounds him is a rare exception in the history of the world.

  Henry James Sumner Maine

  Home, Europe, Citizens

  Henry Sumner Maine, Sir, J. H. Morgan (2000). “Ancient Law”, p.13, Beard Books

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• For no man can write anything who does not think that what he writes is, for the time, the history of the world.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Writing, Men, Thinking

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1493, Delphi Classics

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• Muslims naturally saw Christendom as their arch rival. One point that is really important to bear in mind, particularly in addressing an American audience, and that is that the Islamic world has a very strong sense of history. In the Muslim world, history is important and their knowledge of history is not always accurate but is very detailed. There is a strong historical sense in the Muslim world, a feeling for the history of Islam from the time of the Prophet until the present day.

  Bernard Lewis

  Strong, Islamic, Feelings

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• England was nothing, compared to continental nations until she had become commercial... until about the middle of the last century, when a number of ingenious and inventive men, without apparent relation to each other, arose in various parts of the kingdom, succeeded in giving an immense impulse to all the branches of the national industry; the result of which has been a harvest of wealth and prosperity, perhaps without a parallel in the history of the world.

  Samuel Smiles

  Men, Numbers, Giving

  "Lives of the Engineers". Book by Samuel Smiles, 1861.

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• Free will appears unfettered, deliberate; it is boundlessly free, wandering, the spirit. But fate is a necessity; unless we believe that world history is a dream-error, the unspeakable sorrows of mankind fantasies, and that we ourselves are but the toys of our fantasies. Fate is the boundless force of opposition against free will. Free will without fate is just as unthinkable as spirit without reality, good without evil. Only antithesis creates the quality.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Dream, Believe, Fate

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• There are some great writers who are great talkers, but there are more great writers who are not great talkers. People seem to think there is some connection between talking and writing, but I love to talk and if there were some connection between the two of them I would be the most prolific writer in the history of the world.

  Fran Lebowitz

  Writing, Thinking, Talking

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• You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was Dostoevsky and Dickens who taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who ever had been alive. Only if we face these open wounds in ourselves can we understand them in other people.

  James A. Baldwin

  Pain, Thinking, People

  "Doom and glory of knowing who you are". Jane Howard, Life Magazine, Volume 54, No. 21 (p. 89), May 24, 1963.

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• The most charming of theories holds that someone other than Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare's plays -- that he was of too low a state, and of insufficient education. But where in the wide history of the world do we find art created by the excessively wealthy, powerful, or educated?

  David Mamet

  Art, Powerful, Play

  David Mamet (2011). “True and False: Heresy and Common Sense for the Actor”, p.35, Vintage

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• The history of the world is like: He kills me, I kill him, only with different cosmetics and different castings. So in 2001, some fanatics killed some Americans, and now some Americans are killing some Iraqis. And in my childhood, some Nazis killed Jews. And now, some Jewish people and some Palestinians are killing each other.

  Woody Allen

  People, Childhood, Different

  "Nothing Pleases Me More than Being Thought of as a European Filmmaker". Interview with Helene Zuber, www.spiegel.de. June 20, 2005.

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• The number one problem in academia today is not ignorant students but ignorant professors, who have substituted narrow "expertise" and "theoretical sophistication" (a preposterous term) for breadth and depth of learning in the world history of art and thought... Art is a vast, ancient interconnected web-work, a fabricated tradition. Overconcentration on any one point is a distortion. This is one of the primary reasons for the dullness and ineptitude of so much twentieth-criticism, as compared to nineteenth-century belles-lettres.

  Camille Paglia

  Art, Numbers, Ignorant

  "Junk Bonds and Corporate Raiders: Academe in the Hour of the Wolf". Camille Paglia, "Arion", Third Series, Volume 1, No. 2, Spring 1991.

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• No history of the world can be complete which does not mention Mary Helen Keller... whose overcoming of her blindness and deafness were arguably victories more important than those of Alexander the Great, because they have implications still for every living person.

  Theodore Zeldin

  Victory, Important, Overcoming

  "An Intimate History of Humanity". Book by Theodore Zeldin, 1994.

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• America is the greatest force for good in the history of the world.

  John McCain

  America, World, Force

  Second McCain, Obama debate, www.cnn.com. October 7, 2008.

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• Most history is a record of the triumphs, disasters, and follies of top people. The black hole in it is the way of life of mute, inglorious men and women who make no nuisance of themselves in the world.

  Philip Howard, 20th Earl of Arundel

  Men, People, History

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• Abraham Lincoln was, in my judgment, in many respects, the grandest man ever President of the United States. Upon his monument these words should be written: "Here sleeps the only man in the history of the world who, having been clothed with almost absolute power, never abused it, except upon the side of mercy."

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Sleep, Men, President

  Robert Green Ingersoll (1907). “The works of Robert G. Ingersoll”, p.198, Library of Alexandria

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• Creation has the truth written all over it - the age of the universe, the history of the world - but nine-tenths of mankind either don't know it or think it's a sham, because it isn't what their book or their prophet says, and it isn't cozy or manipulable enough.

  Sheri S. Tepper

  Book, Thinking, Age

  "The Visitor". Book by Sheri S. Tepper, 2002.

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• I often said that never in the history of the world did one man receive so much faith and trust as Hitler. Similary, no one has ever betrayed so many people and abused so much good faith as he did.

  Hans Fritzsche

  Men, People, World

  "The Nuremberg Interviews" by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately, (p. 71), 2004.

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• Through the history of the world there have always been exploiters and exploited. There always will be ... because the great mass of men are made by nature to be slaves, they are unfit to control themselves, and for their own good need masters.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Men, Atheism, Needs

  W. Somerset Maugham (2009). “Christmas Holiday”, p.228, Random House

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• Once people get hung up on theology, they've lost sanity forever. More people have been killed in the name of Jesus Christ than any other name in the history of the world.

  Gore Vidal

  Jesus, Names, People

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• If Providence had not guided us I would often never have found these dizzy paths.  Thus, it is that we National Socialists have in the depths of our hearts our faith.  No man can fashion world history or the history of peoples unless upon his purpose and his powers there rests the blessing of this Providence.

  Adolf Hitler

  Fashion, Heart, Men

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• I have always preferred the company of older people. No one in the history of the world has had less interest in the young than I do. I am not interested in what young people are thinking. They're thinking less than old people, of course. I mean, what could they be thinking? And what are they doing? They're doing the same stupid things you did.

  Fran Lebowitz

  Stupid, Mean, Thinking

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• If a quick glance back over world history shows us anything, it shows us that war was one of our most universal joys from our earliest beginnings, savored at every possible opportunity and even some quite incomprehensible ones.

  Barbara Holland

  War, Opportunity, Joy

  Barbara Holland (1999). “Wasn't the Grass Greener?: A Curmudgeon's Fond Memories”, Harcourt

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• the pyramids were built for pharaohs on the happy theory that they could take their stuff with them. Versailles was built for kings on the theory that they should live surrounded by the finest stuff. The Mall of America is built on the premise that we should all be able to afford this stuff. It may be a shallow culture, but it's by-God democratic. Sneer if you dare; this is something new in world history.

  Molly Ivins

  Kings, Shopping, Pyramids

  Molly Ivins (2010). “You Got to Dance with Them What Brung You”, p.94, Vintage

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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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• Spiritual wisdom is now available to everyone, disseminated to the masses as never before in world history.

  Marianne Williamson

  Spiritual, Jesus, Discovery

  "Illuminata: Thoughts, Prayers, Rites of Passage". Book by Marianne Williamson (Part I "Thoughts", Chapter 2 "The Luminous Mind", p. 29), November 1994.

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• Histories of the world omitted China; if a Chinaman invented compass or movable type or gunpowder we promptly "forgot it" and named their European inventors. In short, we regarded China as a sort of different and quite inconsequential planet.

  W. E. B. Du Bois

  Gunpowder, Different, World

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