Quotes about history
page 34

“Some think that we are approaching a critical moment in the history of Liberalism…We hear of a divergence of old Liberalism and new…The terrible new school, we hear, are for beginning operations by dethroning Gladstonian finance. They are for laying hands on the sacred ark. But did any one suppose that the fiscal structure which was reared in 1853 was to last for ever, incapable of improvement, and guaranteed to need no repair? We can all of us recall, at any rate, one very memorable admission that the great system of Gladstonian finance had not reached perfection. That admission was made by no other person than Mr. Gladstone himself in his famous manifesto of 1874, when he promised the most extraordinary reduction of which our taxation is capable. Surely there is as much room for improvement in taxation as in every other work of fallible man, provided that we always cherish the just and sacred principle of taxation that it is equality of private sacrifice for public good. Another heresy is imputed to this new school which fixes a deep gulf between the wicked new Liberals and the virtuous old. We are adjured to try freedom first before we try interference of the State. That is a captivating formula, but it puzzles me to find that the eminent statesman who urges us to lay this lesson to heart is strongly in favour of maintaining the control of the State over the Church? But is State interference an innovation? I thought that for 30 years past Liberals had been as much in favour as other people of this protective legislation. Are to we assume that it has all been wrong? Is my right hon. friend going to propose its repeal or the repeal of any of it; or has all past interference been wise, and we have now come to the exact point where not another step can be taken without mischief? …other countries have tried freedom and it is just because we have decided that freedom in such a case is only a fine name for neglect, and have tried State supervision, that we have saved our industrial population from the waste, destruction, destitution, and degradation that would otherwise have overtaken them…In short, gentlemen, I am not prepared to allow that the Liberty and the Property Defence League are the only people with a real grasp of Liberal principles, that Lord Bramwell and the Earl of Wemyss are the only Abdiels of the Liberal Party.”

John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923) British Liberal statesman, writer and newspaper editor

Annual presidential address to the Junior Liberal Association of Glasgow (10 February 1885), quoted in 'Mr. John Morley At Glasgow', The Times (11 February 1885), p. 10.

People, School, Thinking, Freedom

“All is forgiven to kings and popes. History grants them immunity, even a full pardon, even when they admit their crimes and glory in them.”

Pierre Stephen Robert Payne (1911–1983) British lecturer, novelist, historian, poet and biographer

Lord Acton, Nietzsche, and Dostoyevsky, p. 180
The Corrupt Society - From Ancient Greece To Present-Day America (1975)

“History is opaque. You see what comes out, not the script that produces events, […] The generator of historical events is different from the events themselves, much as the minds of the gods cannot be read just by witnessing their deeds.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb (1960) Lebanese-American essayist, scholar, statistician, former trader and risk analyst

Source: The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (2007), p. 8

God, Reading

“Bourgeois political economy … never gets to see man who is its real subject. It disregards the essence of man and his history and is thus in the profoundest sense not a ‘science of people’ but of non-people and of an inhuman world of objects and commodities.”

Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979) German philosopher, sociologist, and political theorist

“The Foundations of Historical Materialism,” Studies in Critical Philosophy (1972), p. 9

People, World, Sense, Science

“We will cleanse every area of public discourse that has been westernised and where Indian culture and civilisation need to be restored - be it the history we read or our cultural heritage or our institutes that have been polluted over years.”

Mahesh Sharma (1959) Indian politician

On westernisation, as quoted in " Centre targets 'cultural pollution' http://www.telegraphindia.com/1150908/jsp/frontpage/story_41407.jsp" Calcutta Telegraph (7 September 2015)

Reading

“We CREATORS are builders. We are dedicated to the idea of building a beautiful world so different and so superior to the present one that we CREATORS of this generation will go down in history as the revolutionaries who ushered in the Golden Age of Mankind.”

Ben Klassen (1918–1993) American engineer, author and politician

White Man's Bible (1983)
White Man's Bible (1983)

Age, World, Beauty, Idea

“A finished or even a competent reasoner is not the work of nature alone… education develops faculties which would otherwise never have manifested their existence. It is, therefore, as necessary to learn to reason before we can expect to be able to reason, as it is to learn to swim or fence, in order to attain either of those arts. Now, something must be reasoned upon, it matters not much what it is, provided that it can be reasoned upon with certainty. The properties of mind or matter, or the study of languages, mathematics, or natural history may be chosen for this purpose. Now, of all these, it is desirable to choose the one… in which we can find out by other means, such as measurement and ocular demonstration of all sorts, whether the results are true or not.
.. Now the mathematics are peculiarly well adapted for this purpose, on the following grounds:—
1. Every term is distinctly explained, and has but one meaning, and it is rarely that two words are employed to mean the same thing.
2. The first principles are self-evident, and, though derived from observation, do not require more of it than has been made by children in general.
3. The demonstration is strictly logical, taking nothing for granted except the self-evident first principles, resting nothing upon probability, and entirely independent of authority and opinion.
4. When the conclusion is attained by reasoning, its truth or falsehood can be ascertained, in geometry by actual measurement, in algebra by common arithmetical calculation. This gives confidence, and is absolutely necessary, if… reason is not to be the instructor, but the pupil.
5. There are no words whose meanings are so much alike that the ideas which they stand for may be confounded.
…These are the principal grounds on which… the utility of mathematical studies may be shewn to rest, as a discipline for the reasoning powers. But the habits of mind which these studies have a tendency to form are valuable in the highest degree. The most important of all is the power of concentrating the ideas which a successful study of them increases where it did exist, and creates where it did not. A difficult position or a new method of passing from one proposition to another, arrests all the attention, and forces the united faculties to use their utmost exertions. The habit of mind thus formed soon extends itself to other pursuits, and is beneficially felt in all the business of life.”

Augustus De Morgan (1806–1871) British mathematician, philosopher and university teacher (1806-1871)

Source: On the Study and Difficulties of Mathematics (1831), Ch. I.

Life, Children, Truth, Education

“I have presented the periodic table as a kind of travel guide to an imaginary country, of which the elements are the various regions. This kingdom has a geography: the elements lie in particular juxtaposition to one another, and they are used to produce goods, much as a prairie produces wheat and a lake produces fish. It also has a history. Indeed, it has three kinds of history: the elements were discovered much as the lands of the world were discovered; the kingdom was mapped, just as the world was mapped, and the relative positions of the elements came to take on a great significance; and the elements have their own cosmic history, which can be traced back to the stars.”

Peter Atkins (1940) British chemist

Preface
Periodic Kingdom (1995)

Lie, World, Travel, Star

“It is a fairly consistent law of humanity that men spend about half their lives at war. A Frenchman, called Lapouge, calculated that from the year 1100 to the year 1500, England had been 207 years at war and 212 years from 1500 to 1900. In France the corresponding figures would be 192 and 181 years. According to that same man Lapouge, nineteen million men are killed in war every century. Their blood would fill three million barrels of 180 liters each, and would feed a fountain of blood running 700 liters an hour from the beginning of history.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Les silences du colonel Bramble (The Silence of Colonel Bramble)

Men, War, Law

“I describe a world with no exit, convinced that God accompanies man throughout his history.”

Jacques Ellul (1912–1994) French sociologist, technology critic, and Christian anarchist

Interview in Le Monde (1981), as quoted in "A short biography of Jacques Ellul (1912-1994)" by Patrick Chastenet, as translated by Lesley Graham http://www.ellul.org/bio_e1.html

God, World

“It will go down in history as a turning point for the music industry. This is landmark stuff. I can't overestimate it!”

Steve Jobs (1955–2011) American entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple Inc.

On the iPod and the iTunes Music Store, as quoted in Fortune magazine (12 May 2003)
2000s

Music

“It has long been speculated that money predates writing because the earliest examples of writing appear to be records of monetary debts—meaning that the closely intertwined chronology of the development of writing and money will make it impossible to find a written history.”

L. Randall Wray (1953) American economist

L. Randall Wray, The Credit Money, State Money, and Endogenous Money Approaches: A Survey and Attempted Integration. (2005)

Money, Appearance

“The initial thesis of my enterprise - on the basis of which this entanglement of periodizations is organized by extracting the sense of each - is this following: the science of being qua being has existed since the Greeks - such is the sense and status of mathematics. However, it is only today that we have the means to know this. It follows from this thesis that philosophy is not centered on on ontology - which exists as a separate and exact discipline- rather it circulates between this ontology (this, mathematics), the modern theories of he subject and its own history. The contemporary complex of the conditions of philosophy includes everything referred to in my first three statements: the history of 'Western'thought, post-Cantorian mathematics, psychoanalysis, contemporary art and politics. Philosophy does not coincide with any of these conditions; nor does it map out the totality to which they belong. What philosophy must do is purpose a conceptual framework in which the contemporary compossibilty of these conditions can be grasped. Philosophy can only do this - and this is what frees it from any foundational ambition, in which it would lose itself- by designating amongst its own conditions, as a singular discursive situation, ontology itself in the form of pure mathematics. This is precisely what delivers philosophy and ordains it to the care of truths.”

Alain Badiou (1937) French writer and philosopher

Introduction
Being and Event (1988)

Truth, Art, Mathematics, Sense

“I also want to talk to you, quite frankly, on a very grave matter. Among ourselves it should be mentioned quite frankly, and yet we will never speak of it publicly. Just as we did not hesitate on June 30th, 1934 to do the duty we were bidden, and stand comrades who had lapsed, up against the wall and shoot them, so we have never spoken about it and will never [p. 65] speak of it. It was that tact which is a matter of course and which I am glad to say, is inherent in us, that made us never discuss it among ourselves, never to speak of it. It appalled everyone, and yet everyone was certain that he would do it the next time if such orders are issued and if it is necessary. I mean the evacuation out of the Jews, the extermination of the Jewish race. It's one of those things it is easy to talk about - "The Jewish race is being exterminated", says one party member, "that's quite clear, it's in our program - elimination of the Jews, and we're doing it, exterminating them." And then they come, 80 million worthy Germans, and each one has his decent Jew. Of course the others are vermin, but this one is an A-1 Jew. Not one of all those who talk this way has witnessed it, not one of them has been through it. Most of you must know what it means when 100 corpses are lying side by side, or 500 or 1000. To have stuck it out and at the same time - apart from exceptions caused by human weakness - to have remained decent fellows, that is what has made us hard. This is a page of glory in our history which has never been written and is never to be [p. 66] written, for we know how difficult we should have made it for ourselves, if - with the bombing raids, the burdens and the deprivations of war - we still had Jews today in every town as secret saboteurs, agitators and trouble-mongers. We would now probably have reached the 1916/17 stage when the Jews were still in the German national body.”

Heinrich Himmler (1900–1945) Nazi officer, Commander of the SS

The Posen speech to SS officers (4 October 1943), original translation from "International Military Trials - Nurnberg Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression Volume IV", US Govt Printing Offc 1946 pp. 563-4.

War, Secret, Way, Lying

“The surrealist thinks he has outstripped the whole of literary history when he has written (here a word that there is no need to write) where others have written "jasmines, swans and fauns." But what he has really done has been simply to bring to light another form of rhetoric which hitherto lay hidden in the latrines.”

José Ortega Y Gasset book The Revolt of the Masses

Source: The Revolt of the Masses (1929), Chapter XI: The Self-Satisfied Age

Thinking, Light

“I confidently predict the collapse of capitalism and the beginning of history. Something will go wrong in the machinery that converts money into money, the banking system will collapse totally, and we will be left having to barter to stay alive. Those who can dig in their garden will have a better chance than the rest. I'll be all right; I've got a few veg.”

Margaret Drabble (1939) Novelist, biographer and critic

The Guardian, January 2, 1993.

Money, Confidence, Chance

“Criminal history shows us how many torturers of men, and murderers, have first been torturers of animals. The manner in which a nation in the aggregate treats animals, is one chief measure of its real civilization. The Latin races, as we know, come forth badly from this examination; we Germans, not half well enough. Buddhism has done more in this direction than Christianity, and Schopenhauer more than all ancient and modern philosophers together. The warm sympathy with sentient Nature which pervades all the writings of Schopenhauer, is one of the most pleasing aspects of his thoroughly intellectual, yet often unhealthy and unprofitable philosophy.”

David Strauss (1808–1874) German theologian

The Old Faith and the New (Der alte und der neue Glaube, 1872, translated from the 6th edition by M. Blind, New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1873), vol. II, part IV, ch. 71, pp. 59 https://archive.org/stream/oldfaithnewconfe01stra#page/59/mode/2up-60.

Men, Nature, Animals

“Though Hitler was indeed racist and anti-Semitic to the core, a man who without compunction could commit murder and genocide, he was also an individual of great courage, a soldier's soldier in the Great War, a political organizer of the first rank, a leader steeped in the history of Europe, who possessed oratorical powers that could awe even those who despised him… Hitler's success was not based on his extraordinary gifts alone. His genius was an intuitive sense of the mushiness, the character flaws, the weakness masquerading as morality that was in the hearts of the statesmen who stood in his path.”

Patrick Buchanan (1938) American politician and commentator

Column discussing John Toland's biography of Hitler http://www.realchange.org/hitler.htm (1977). 1970s

War, Courage, Sense, Success

“These are the materials for reflection which history affords to those who choose to make use of them.”

Plutarch book Parallel Lives

Aemilius, sec. 5
Parallel Lives

“Just as a Muslim studies Islam, the Jew has to study Judaism. Everyone has to learn the heritage of his family and the history that dates back thousands of years.”

Lev Leviev (1956) Soviet-born Israeli businessman, philanthropist and investor

Interview, Jewish Chronicle, 7 March 2008 http://thejc.com/home.aspx?AId58607&ATypeId1&searchtrue2&srchstrLev%20leviev&srchtxt1&srchhead1&srchauthor1&srchsandp1&scsrch0

Family, Study, Learning

“Were it necessary to bring a majority into a comprehension of the libertarian philosophy, the cause of liberty would be utterly hopeless. Every significant movement in history has been led by one or just a few individuals with a small minority of energetic supporters.”

Leonard E. Read (1898–1983) American academic

How to Advance Liberty, How to Advance Liberty https://mises.org/library/how-advance-liberty

Support

“Islam is to be envisaged as dialectical evolution, or evolutionary mutation, in the prophetic tradition, in response to the limitations built into the structure of orthodox Christianity by its historic compromise with Roman imperialism; by its commitment to scriptural canon, creedal orthodoxy and episcopal hierarchy; and by its consequent scandalous history of schism and persecution”

Norman O. Brown (1913–2002) classicist

duly noted in the Koran
Source: "The Prophetic Tradition" (1982), p. 371

“It is not only the study of philosophy which can become perverted. The study of history too can become warped. The colonized African student, whose roots in his own society are systematically starved of sustenance, is introduced to Greek and Roman history, the cradle history of modern Europe, and he is encouraged to treat this portion of the story of man together with the subsequent history of Europe as the only worthwhile portion. This history is anointed with a universalist flavouring which titillates the palate of certain African intellectuals so agreeably that they become alienated from their own immediate society.”

Kwame Nkrumah (1909–1972) Pan Africanist and First Prime Minister and President of Ghana

Source: Consciencism (1964), Philosophy In Retrospect, p. 5.

Study

“…we were brainwashed into believing… that the only important thing was individualism. They called it freedom. There is no such thing as freedom. There is something called liberty; it's quite different. …read [Guido de] Ruggiero's History of European Liberalism… Freedom is freedom from restraints. We're always under restraints.”

Carroll Quigley (1910–1977) American historian

Oscar Iden Lecture Series, Lecture 3: "The State of Individuals" (1976)

Freedom, Reading

“None of us can raise a family, build a business, heal a community or lift a country totally alone. America needs every one of us to lend our energy, our talents, our ambition to making our nation better and stronger. I believe that with all my heart. That's why “Stronger Together” is not just a lesson from our history. It's not just a slogan for our campaign. It's a guiding principle for the country we've always been and the future we're going to build. A country where the economy works for everyone, not just those at the top. Where you can get a good job and send your kids to a good school, no matter what zip code you live in. A country where all our children can dream, and those dreams are within reach. Where families are strong… communities are safe… And yes, love trumps hate. That's the country we're fighting for. That's the future we're working toward.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), 2016 Democratic National Convention (July 28, 2016)

Love, Hate, Children, School

“There are four great events in history, the siege of Troy, the life and crucifixion of Christ, the exile of Krishna in Brindaban and the colloquy on the field of Kurukshetra. The siege of Troy created Hellas, the exile in Brindaban created devotional religion, (for before there was only meditation and worship), Christ from his cross humanized Europe, the colloquy at Kurukshetra will yet liberate humanity.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

On the Bhagavad Gita quoted in "Introduction to the Bhagavad Gita" (1993) by by Paul Molinari http://www.collaboration.org/97/nov/text/9_gita.html

Life, Religion, Christ

“If we look at Somalia, Ethiopia and Lybia, to how they're reduced now, and to how they were before, with Italy, I think that this page of history will be rewritten and there will be a positive evaluation of the role of Italy”

Gianfranco Fini (1952) Italian politician

October 2006; cited in Alberto Piccinini, Lezioni di storia, il manifesto, 9 settembre 2008, p. 12.

Thinking

“The word ontology comes from the Greek ontos for being and logos for word. It is a relatively new term in the long history of philosophy, introduced by the 19th century German philosophers to distinguish the study of being as such from the study of various kinds of beings in the natural sciences. The traditional term for the types of beings is Aristotle's word category, which he used for classifying anything that can be said or predicated about anything.”

John F. Sowa (1940) artificial intelligence researcher

John F. Sowa, "Building, Sharing and Merging Ontologies" http://www.jfsowa.com/ontology/ontoshar.htm on jfsowa.com. Last Modified: 01/18/2009.

Nature, Study, Science

“Since we are a Christian country, God above all. This history of a secular state doesn't exist, no. The state is Christian and the minority that is against it can leave. Let's make a country for majority! The minority must bow to the majority. Law must exist to defend the majority! The minority suits itself [to the law] or just disappears.”

Jair Bolsonaro (1955) Brazilian president elect

At Campina Grande Airport https://theintercept.com/2018/09/25/ideias-nazifascistas-bolsonarismo/ on 8 February 2018. Brazil presidential candidate Bolsonaro's most controversial quotes https://www.yahoo.com/news/brazil-presidential-candidate-bolsonaros-most-controversial-quotes-012652084.html. Yahoo!, 29 September 2018.

God, Law, Country

“While pretending to liberate mankind from the alleged oppression of capitalism Marxist Man has defied the warm, white light of Twentieth Century civilization to introduce slavery on a scale unprecedented in the history of the race. While claiming to foster the "rights of the common man" the Marxist has butchered his fellow citizens from Kulaks to aristocrats in numbers that baffle rational comprehension. And while describing himself as the epitome of the best in nature - the creature of science, the supreme intelligence of the universe -Homo-Marxian has exploited his cunning to compound crimes which scarcely would be duplicated by the most predatory tribes of pre-historic times.”

W. Cleon Skousen book The Naked Communist

The Naked Communist (1958)

Intelligence, Nature, Light, Universe

“Bright-minded young people think poorly of existing institutions and want to abolish them. Well, one doesn't need to be young to dislike institutions. But the dreary fact remains that, even in the darkest ages, it was institutions that made society work, and if civilisation is to survive society must somehow be made to work.At this point I reveal myself in my true colours, as a stick-in-the-mud. I hold a number of beliefs that have been repudiated by the liveliest intellects of our time. I believe that order is better than chaos, creation better than destruction. I prefer gentleness to violence, forgiveness to vendetta. I believe that in spite of the recent triumphs of science, men haven't changed much in the last two thousand years; and in consequence we must still try to learn from history. History is ourselves.”

Kenneth Clark (1903–1983) Art historian, broadcaster and museum director

Source: Civilisation (1969), Ch. 13: Heroic Materialism

Men, People, Age, Forgiveness

“History writes the word 'Reconciliation' over all her quarrels.”

Jan Smuts (1870–1950) military leader, politician and statesman from South Africa

Smuts to Alfred Milner (1905), as cited in Antony Lentin, 2010, Jan Smuts – Man of courage and vision ISBN 978-1-86842-390-3

“English: "Before the watch of God and the testimony of History, I want to proclaim: Argentina, get up and walk!"”

Carlos Menem (1930) Argentine politician who was President of Argentina from 1989 to 1999

"Ante la mirada de Dios y el testimonio de la Historia, yo quiero proclamar: ¡Argentina, levántate y anda!" El presidente Menem hace un llamamiento a la unidad para sacar a Argentina de su "crisis terminal" http://elpais.com/diario/1989/07/09/internacional/615938409_850215.html. Biblical reference.

God

“The accounts that history presents have to be paid. Past has to be reconciled with present in the life of a nation. History is an insistent force: the past is what put us where we are. the past cannot be put behind until it is settled with.”

William Pfaff (1928–2015) American journalist

Source: Barbarian Sentiments - How The American Century Ends (1989), Chapter 1, Dead Stars, p. 3.

Life, Past

“In human history it seems that the idea of using a pictograph in the new function of representing sound may have occurred only three times: once in Mesopotamia, perhaps by the Sumerians, once in China, apparently by the Chinese themselves, and once in Central America, by the Mayas. (Conceivably it was invented only once, but there is no evidence that the Chinese or the Mayas acquired the idea from elsewhere.) The idea that was independently conceived by these three peoples was taken over, as were at times even the symbols themselves, though often in a highly modified form, by others who made adaptations to fit a host of totally different languages. One of the major adaptations, generally attributed to the Greeks, was the narrowing of sound representation from syllabic representation to phonemic representation (Gelb 1963; Trager 1974), after an earlier stage of mixed pictographic and syllabic writing (Chadwick 1967).”

John DeFrancis book The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy

The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy (1984, p. 139) http://www.pinyin.info/readings/texts/ideographic_myth.html The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy (1984)

People, Idea, Time

“While we recognize that in the general development of history the material determines the mental and social being determines social consciousness, we also - and indeed must - recognize the reaction of mental on material things, of social consciousness on social being and of the superstructure on the economic base. This does not go against materialism; on the contrary, it avoids mechanical materialism and firmly upholds dialectical materialism.”

Mao Zedong book On Contradiction

On Contradiction (1937)

“Our pride and progress could be unqualified if the story might end here. But history reveals that America has been a schizophrenic personality where these two documents are concerned. On the one hand she has proudly professed the basic principles inherent in both documents. On the other hand she has sadly practiced the antithesis of these principles.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Emancipation Proclamation Centennial Address (1962)

Personality

“The Sun editorial on Roosevelt this morning begins: "Franklin D. Roosevelt was a great man."… The argument, in brief, is that all his skullduggeries and imbecilities were wiped out when "he took an inert and profoundly isolationist people and brought them to support a necessary war on a scale never before imagined." In other words, his greatest fraud was his greatest glory, and his sufficient excuse for all his other frauds. It seems to me to be very likely that Roosevelt will take a high place in American popular history -- maybe even alongside Washington and Lincoln… He had every quality that morons esteem in their heros. It will be to the interest of all his heirs and assigns to whoop him up, and they will probably succeed in swamping his critics.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

April 13, 1945
1940s–present, The Diary of H.L. Mencken (1989)

War, People, Imagination, Support

“When I arrived to take command of the war in June 2009, in addition to the rising violence and sense of insecurity, I found a creeping, fatalistic pessimism, as though the fight were over, the effort failed. Some pointed to history and declared the country intractable. Few countries or NGOs were leaving, but many wanted to. There was growing unease with the viability of the mission. Indeed, in those early days, as I assessed the war, I wasn't sure the mission could be done. Although I'd known it would be difficult, the situation was even worse than I'd anticipated. I was further cautioned by the fact that I would be the twelfth commander to lead the NATO effort in Afghanistan, the latest in a succession of experienced professionals. Any solution would not only be a military one; it had to encompass much more. But as we looked closer and considered a range of strategies, I concluded that it was possible. The intimidating specter of Afghanistan as an impossible challenge belied the reality. The obstacles were numerous, but the accrued problems were not insoluble, just incredibly difficult.”

Stanley A. McChrystal (1954) American general

Source: My Share Of The Task (2013), p. 277-278

War, Problem, Reality, Sense

“As the largest grassroots effort in the history of the world, file trading is essentially the average person's way of saying we don't agree with the status quo.”

Richard Menta American journalist

Source RIAA and MPAA sue Morpheus, Grokster and KaZaa http://web.archive.org/web/20020803182858/www.mp3newswire.net/stories/2001/sue_morpheus.html - 10/03/2001 Quotes from the MP3 Newswire

World, Way, Effort, Personality

“The new trade theory picture of the world looks something like this: Each country has, at any given time, a set of broad resources—land, skilled labor, capital, climate, general technological competence. These resources define up to a point the industries in which the country can hope to be competitive on world markets. […] But a country's resources do not fully determine what it produces, because the detailed pattern of advantage reflects the self-reinforcing virtuous circles, set in motion by the vagaries of history.”

Paul Krugman book Peddling Prosperity

Source: Peddling Prosperity (1994), Ch. 9 : The Economics of QWERTY

World, Hope, Time, Country

“Without any coherent national organisation to repel from the land on which they had settled the ever-unknowable descents from the seas, the Saxons, now for four centuries entitled to be deemed the owners of the soil, very nearly succumbed completely to the Danish inroads. That they did not was due--as almost every critical turn of historic fortune has been due--to the sudden apparition in an era of confusion and decay of one of the great figures of history.”

Winston S. Churchill book A History of the English-Speaking Peoples

On King Alfred the Great; Vol I; The Birth of Britain.
A History of the English-Speaking Peoples (1956–58)

Sea

“The Bible is the most brutally honest book that does not whitewash or sugarcoat history.”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

Google It: Total Information Awareness, 2016

Books

“First of all, no one can accuse me, Ayad Jamal Aldin, of secatarianism, because I support a secular regime that fully separates religion and the state. […] I believe that my freedom as a Shia and as a religious person will never be complete unless I preserve the freedom of the Sunni, the Christian, the Jew, the Sabai and the Yazidi. We will not be able to preserve the freedom of the mosque unless we preserve the freedom of entertainment clubs. […] The curricula - both the modern ones, in some Arab and Islamic countries, and the books of jurisprudence and heritage - have many flaws that must be fixed once and for all. There are rulings about Ahl al-Dhimma - even if, Allah be praised, no current regime can enforce these rulings. However, just for the sake of amusement and diversion, I recommend that the viewers read the books of jurisprudence, and see how Ahl al-Dhimma are treated. I especially recommend this to people with a lust for Arab and Islamic history, who claim that our history is a source of pride, and that others were treated with kindness and love - especially Christians and Jews. Among these rulings, a Dhimmi must wear a belt, so he would be identifiable. Moreover, it is recommended that he be forced to the narrowest paths, and there are even jurisprudents who say that it is recommended to slap a Christian on the back of his neck so he would feel humiliated and degraded. This is how we harass him and then invite him to join Islam. I can swear that the Prophet Muhammad is innocent of such inhuman jurisprudence. I challenge anyone among the people with a lust for history to talk candidly to the West, to the advocates of human rights, and tell them that our heritage has such evils and flaws. We are a nation of blackout and darkness. We cannot live in the light of day. […] We do not hold ourselves accountable. This is why America came to demand that the Arabs be accountable. We must have more self-confidence and be accountable before others hold us accountable. We must discipline ourselves before the Americans and English discipline us. We must maintain human rights, which we have neglected for 1,300 or 1,400 years, to this day - until the arrival of the Americans, the Christians, the English, the Zionists, the Crusaders - call them what you will. They came to teach you, the followers of Muhammad, how to respect human rights.”

Iyad Jamal Al-Din (1961) Iraqi politician

Sayyed Ayad Jamal Aldin: Sayyed Ayad Jamal Aldin: The Arabs Want Tyrannical Regimes, in Line with Their Backward Culture, LBC TV, July 31, 2005 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_ZKffu6Wsg,

Love, People, Books, Religion

“That it was actual and serious in France as in the Senate Chamber at Washington, proved itself at once by forcing Adams to buy an automobile, which was a supreme demonstration because this was the form of force which Adams most abominated. He had set aside the summer for study of the Virgin, not as a sentiment but as a motive power, which had left monuments widely scattered and not easily reached. The automobile alone could unite them in any reasonable sequence, and although the force of the automobile, for the purposes of a commercial traveller, seemed to have no relation whatever to the force that inspired a Gothic cathedral, the Virgin in the twelfth century would have guided and controlled both bag-man and architect, as she controlled the seeker of history.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Travel, Motivation, Study, Summer

“Like most of those who study history, he learned from the mistakes of the past how to make new ones.”

A.J.P. Taylor (1906–1990) Historian

Referring to Napoleon III, in "Mistaken Lessons from the Past", The Listener (6 June 1963)

Study, Learning, Past

“Through most of colonial history, inhabitants of the 13 colonies were loyal subjects of the British crown — resourceful, dedicated and as the Third Duchess of Kent… was fond of saying, "Some tea-drinkin' motherfuckahs." In fact, whenever the subject of the New World was mentioned, the Duchess could always be counted on for a wistful head-shake and a hearty "Motherfuckahs love that motherfuckin' tea."”

Jon Stewart book America

America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction (2004)

Love, World, Tea

“Every American is hard-wired in history or experience to be libertarian about something.”

Bob Barr (1948) Republican and Libertarian politician

Marshall News Messenger (27 July 2008), Copelin, Laylan Libertarians want to be kingmakers in legislative races http://www.marshallnewsmessenger.com/news/content/region/legislature/stories/07/28/0728libertarians.html, Marhall News Messenger, 27 July 2008. 2000s, 2008

“I have come to use the pan-Celtic history, which spans from 500 BC to the present, as a creative springboard. The music I am creating is a result of traveling down that road and picking up all manner of themes and influences, which may or may not be overtly Celtic in nature.”

Loreena McKennitt (1957) Canadian musician and composer

Website notes to The Mask And Mirror http://www.quinlanroad.com/explorethemusic/maskandmirror.asp

Music, Travel, Nature

“Institutionalization is a process. It is something that happens to an organization over time, reflecting the organization’s own distinctive history, the people who have been in it, the groups it embodies and the vested interests they have created, and the way it has adapted to its environment.”

Philip Selznick (1919–2010) American sociologist

Source: Leadership in Administration: A Sociological Interpretation, 1957, p. 34 (in 2011 edition)

People, Way, Time

“The story of the Ten Commandments is clearly based on the earlier story of the law code of Hammurabi, which was a better list and actually existed in real history centuries before the legends now attributed to Moses. Since then, people have come up with better documents like the Magna Carta and the U. S. Constitution. These are better, largely because they stand against what [the] Commandments represent; giving power to the people instead of indomitable despots.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Youtube, Other, The Damn Commandments https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8u3z69YpLx0 (January 7, 2015)

People, Law

“It cannot be denied that Islam, regarded as an ethical ideal plus a certain kind of polity – by which expression I mean a social structure regulated by a legal system and animated by a specific ethical ideal – has been the chief formative factor in the life-history of the Muslims of India. It has furnished those basic emotions and loyalties which gradually unify scattered individuals and groups, and finally transform them into a well-defined people, possessing a moral consciousness of their own.”

Muhammad Iqbál (1877–1938) Urdu poet and leader of the Pakistan Movement

Sir Muhammad Iqbal’s 1930 Presidential Address to the 25th Session of the All-India Muslim League, Allahabad, 29 December 1930 (from University of Columbia website http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00islamlinks/txt_iqbal_1930.html)

Life, People, Animals, Loyalty

“The naturalists, you know, distribute the history of nature into three kingdoms or departments: zoology, botany, mineralogy. Ideology, or mind, however, occupies so much space in the field of science, that we might perhaps erect it into a fourth kingdom or department. But inasmuch as it makes a part of the animal construction only, it would be more proper to subdivide zoology into physical and moral.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Thomas Jefferson, Letter (24 Mar 1824) to Mr. Woodward. Collected in The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: Correspondence (1854), 339.
Posthumous publications, On botany

Nature, Science, Animals, Parting

“I once asked Aragon, the historian, how history was written. He said, 'You have to invent it.' When I wish as now to tell of critical incidents, persons, and events that have influenced my life and work, the true answer is all of the incidents were critical, all of the people influenced me, everything that happened and that is still happening influences me.”

John Cage (1912–1992) American avant-garde composer

Quote of John Cage: the first lines of his 'Autobiographical Statement', April, 1990 http://www.johncage.org/autobiographical_statement.html 1990s

Life, People, Personality

“Nineteenth-century civilization rested on four institutions. The first was the balance-of-power system which for a century prevented the occurrence of any long and devastating war between the Great Powers. The second was the international gold standard which symbolized a unique organization of world economy. The third was the self-regulating market which produced an unheard-of material welfare. The fourth was the liberal state. Classified in one way, two of these institutions were economic, two political. Classified in another way, two of them were national, two international. Between them they determined the characteristic outlines of the history of our civilization.
Of these institutions the gold standard proved crucial; its fall was the proximate cause of the catastrophe. By the time it failed, most of the other institutions had been sacrificed in a vain effort to save it. But the fount and matrix of the system was the self-regulating market. It was this innovation which gave rise to a specific civilization.”

Karl Polanyi book The Great Transformation

The Great Transformation (1944), Ch. 1 : The Hundred Years' Peace

War, World, Way, Effort

“At a very early stage in history we are encountering "survivorship bias" - the fact that only the best results tend to show up in the history books.”

William J. Bernstein (1948) economist

Source: The Four Pillars of Investing (2002), Chapter 1, No Guts, No Glory, p. 8.

Books

“And history also shows that seemingly ordinary people who are sufficiently resolute about justice can triumph over the most formidable adversaries.”

Edward Snowden (1983) American whistleblower and former National Security Agency contractor

Penguin Books 2015 edition, page 46.
No Place to Hide (2014)

People, Justice

“Our constitutional history started with the States retaining all powers of sovereignty unimpaired, save those conferred upon the National Government. The evolution of the constitutional system has consisted largely in determining the line of demarcation between State and national authority. The cases involved are many and complicated, but there is a fairly good popular understanding of this continuing struggle between these contending sovereignties. Because of better communication and transportation, the constant tendency has been to more and more social and economic unification. The present continent-wide union of forty-eight States is much closer than was the original group of thirteen States.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, The Reign of Law (1925)

Communication, Understanding

“October 14, 1972: that date should become a landmark in movie history comparable to May 29, 1913 — the night Le Sacre du Printemps was first performed — in music history. There was no riot, and no one threw anything at the screen, but I think it’s fair to say that the audience was in a state of shock, because Last Tango in Paris has the same kind of hypnotic excitement as the Sacre, the same primitive force, and the same thrusting, jabbing eroticism. […] Bertolucci and Brando have altered the face of an art form. Who was prepared for that?”

Pauline Kael (1919–2001) American film critic

From "The Current Cinema" http://www.criterion.com/current/posts/834-last-tango-in-paris. The New Yorker. October 28, 1972.

Art, Music, Thinking, Night

“I don't like the definition 'war correspondent'. It is history, not journalism, that has condemned the Middle East to war. I think 'war correspondent' smells a bit, reeks of false romanticism: it has too much of the whiff of Victorian reporters who would view battles from hilltops in the company of ladies, immune to suffering, only occasionally glancing towards the distant pop-pop of cannon fire.”

Robert Fisk (1946) English writer and journalist

Preface (page XXI)
The Great War for Civilization (2005)

War, Thinking, Suffering, Distant

“I know this is the question period, but there’s a quote here which is just so relevant. I hope I can — I hope I can read it. It’s from an article by, uh, Yossi Klein Halevi on Pesach Jews versus Purim Jews. So he talks about these — there’s these two threads, these two strands among — among — among Jews in — actually, there’s more in Israel. But it’s here, too. So he — I just love this, and it fits so well with — with — with The Righteous Mind. He says, uh, Jewish history speaks to our generation in the voice of two Biblical commands to remember.”

Jonathan Haidt (1963) American psychologist

"The Psychology Behind Morality" (12 June 2014) http://www.onbeing.org/program/jonathan-haidt-the-psychology-behind-morality/transcript/6347#main_content

Love, Hope, Quotes, Question

“Is this fight against history part of the fight against a dimension of the mind in which centrifugal faculties and forces might develop—faculties and forces that might hinder the total coordination of the individual with the society? Remembrance of the Fast may give rise to dangerous insights, and the established society seems to be apprehensive of the subversive contents of memory. Remembrance is a mode of dissociation from the given facts, a mode of “mediation” which breaks, for short moments, the omnipresent power of the given facts. Memory recalls the terror and the hope that passed. Both come to life again”

Herbert Marcuse book One-Dimensional Man

Source: One-Dimensional Man (1964), p. 98

Life, Hope, Memory, Fight

“In Torrens, Life of Lord Melbourne, Volume I, p. 320, and in Walpole's History of England from Conclusion of the Great War, Volume III, p. 143.”

William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne (1779–1848) British Whig statesman

Life, War

“In the whole history of the sea, there is little to equal the wonderful behavior of these humble players.”

Steve Turner (1949) British writer

Source: The Band That Played On (Thomas Nelson, 2011), p. 11

Behavior, Sea

“We are now entering upon an important period of our development as a State. Our infancy as a Territorial Government has passed into history. Our early struggle as a young State of the Union has already turned the point of successful trial, and we now stand in the threshold of coming strength and power. With a territory ranking among the largest of the sisterhood, with a soil equal to the best, and a climate of a salubrity and healthfulness enjoyed by none other, with resources for the employment of industry of great variety and extent, it would seem difficult to predict for Oregon anything short of a most successful career. In fact, with a creditable management of public affairs, nothing stands in the way of our prosperity.”

La Fayette Grover (1823–1911) American politician

La Fayette Grover (September 14, 1870). Governor LaFayette Grover - Inaugural Address, 1870 http://records.sos.state.or.us/ORSOSWebDrawer/Recordpdf/6777835. Oregon State Archives, Oregon Secretary of State. Source: Inaugural Address of Gov. LaFayette Grover to the Legislative Assembly September 14, 1870, Salem, Oregon, T. Patterson, State Printer, 1870.

Health, Way, Success

“In my opinion a system of operations, to be efficient and successful, should be such as to give to the principal and responsible head of the running department a complete daily history of details in all their minutiae. Without such supervision, the procurement of a satisfactory annual statement must be regarded as extremely problematical. The fact that dividends are earned without such control, does not disprove the position, as in many cases the extraordinarily remunerative nature of an enterprise may ensure satisfactory returns under the most loose and inefficient management.
It may be proper here to remark, that in consequence of that want of adaptation before alluded to, we cannot avail ourselves to any great extent of the plan of organization of shorter lines in framing one for this, nor have we any precedent or experience upon which we can fully rely in doing so. Under these circumstances, it will scarcely be expected that we can at once adopt any plan of operations which will not require amendment and a reasonable time to prove its worth. A few general principles, however, may be regarded as settled and necessary in its formation, amongst which are:”

Daniel McCallum (1815–1878) Canadian engineer and early organizational theorist

Report of the Superintendent of the New York and Erie Railroad to the Stockholders (1856)

Nature, Time, Success

“He has borne the burdens few other men have borne in the history of the world, without hope or desire or thought to escape them. He has sought consensus but he has never shrunk from controversy. He has gained huge popularity but he has never failed to spend it in the pursuit of his beliefs or in the interest of his country.”

Robert F. Kennedy (1925–1968) American politician and brother of John F. Kennedy

On LBJ (June 3, 1967); quoted in "The World Turned Upside Down" http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1968/03/25/page/20/article/the-world-turned-upside-down

Men, World, Hope, Country

“The free trade agreement that we will have to do with the European Union should be one of the easiest in human history…/ /…. The only reason that we wouldn’t come to a free and open agreement is because politics gets in the way of economics.”

Liam Fox (1961) British Conservative politician

BBC Today programme https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-40667879/eu-trade-deal-easiest-in-human-history (20 July 2017) 2017

Way

“Modern Slavs, both Bulgarians and Macedonians, cannot establish a link with antiquity, as the Slavs entered the Balkans centuries after the demise of the ancient Macedonian kingdom. Only the most radical Slavic factions—mostly émigrés in the United States, Canada, and Australia—even attempt to establish a connection to antiquity […] The twentieth-century development of a Macedonian ethnicity, and its recent evolution into independent statehood following the collapse of the Yugoslav state in 1991, has followed a rocky road. In order to survive the vicissitudes of Balkan history and politics, the Macedonians, who have had no history, need one. They reside in a territory once part of a famous ancient kingdom, which has borne the Macedonian name as a region ever since and was called ”Macedonia” for nearly half a century as part of Yugoslavia. And they speak a language now recognized by most linguists outside Bulgaria, Serbia, and Greece as a south Slavic language separate from Slovenian, Serbo-Croatian, and Bulgarian. Their own so-called Macedonian ethnicity had evolved for more than a century, and thus it seemed natural and appropriate for them to call the new nation “Macedonia” and to attempt to provide some cultural references to bolster ethnic survival..”

Eugene N. Borza (1935) American historian

"Macedonia Redux", in "The Eye Expanded: life and the arts in Greco-Roman Antiquity", ed. Frances B Tichener & Richard F. Moorton, University of California Press, 1999

Nature, Parting

“Because she jumbles up so many cultural categories, because she is a feminist not in the Yale Gender Studies sense but the How Do I Reload This Thang way, because she is a woman who in style, history, moxie and femininity is exactly like a normal American feminist and not an Abstract Theory feminist; because she wears makeup and heels and eats mooseburgers and is Alaska Tough, as Time magazine put it; because she is conservative, and pro-2nd Amendment and pro-life; and because conservatives can smell this sort of thing — who is really one of them and who is not — and will fight to the death for one of their beleaguered own; because of all of this she is a real and present danger to the American left, and to the Obama candidacy.”

Peggy Noonan (1950) American author and journalist

"Open Mic Night at MSNBC" The Wall Street Journal (3 September 2008) http://online.wsj.com/article/declarations.html

Life, Death, Way, Sense

“We have had landlord rule longer, far longer than the life of the oldest man in this vast assembly, and I would ask you to look at the results of that rule. The landowners have had unlimited sway in Parliament and in the provinces. Abroad the history of our country is the history of war and rapine: at home, of debt, taxes, and rapine too. In all the great contests in which we have been engaged we have found that this ruling class have taken all the honours, while the people have taken all the scars. No sooner was the country freed from the horrible contest which was so long carried on with the Powers of Europe, than this law, by their partial legislation, was enacted—far more hostile to British interests than any combination of foreign powers has ever proved. We find them legislating corruptly: they pray daily that in their legislation they may discard all private ends and partial affections, and after prayers they sit down to make a law for the purpose of extorting from all the consumers of food a higher price than it is worth, that the extra price may find its way into the pockets of the proprietors of land, these proprietors being the very men by whom this infamous law is sustained…”

John Bright (1811–1889) British Radical and Liberal statesman

Speech in Covent Garden (19 December 1845), quoted in G. M. Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (London: Constable, 1913), p. 142.
1840s

Life, Men, Hostility, War

“It is a fascinating story to those who care for their Bible. It is the life-history of the greatest of books, diversified by interesting episodes which appeal to our human sympathies; and we venture to think that the result is reassuring. It may be disturbing to some to part with the conception of a Bible handed down through the ages without alteration and in unchallenged authority; but it is a higher ideal to face the facts, to apply the best powers with which God has endowed us to the solutions of the problems which they present to us; and it reassuring at the end to find that the general result of all these discoveries and all this study is to strengthen the proof of the authenticity of the Scripture, and our conviction that we have in our hands, in substantial integrity, the veritable Word of God.”

Frederic G. Kenyon (1863–1952) British palaeographer and biblical and classical scholar

Source: The Story Of The Bible, Chapter X, The Position Today, p. 144

Life, God, Books, Age

“All these cries for peace we hear in Israel, especially from our side, do not bring peace any closer -- they only push it away. If you chase peace it only eludes you. That's not game theory; that's history.”

Robert Aumann (1930) Israeli-American mathematician

From an article on Israel Hayom http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=23811

Peace, Game

“Anti-Americanism from abroad would not be such a problem if Americans were united in standing up for their own country. But in this country itself, there are those who blame America for most of the evils in the world. On the political left, many fault the United States for a history of slavery, and for continuing inequality and racism. Even on the right, traditionally the home of patriotism, we hear influential figures say that America has become so decadent… If these critics are right, then America should be destroyed. And who can dispute some of their particulars? This country did have a history of slavery and racism continues to exist. There is much in our culture that is vulgar and decadent. But the critics are wrong about America, because they are missing the big picture. In their indignation over the sins of America, they ignore what is unique and good about American civilization.”

Dinesh D'Souza (1961) Indian-American political commentator, filmmaker, author

Articles, 10 Things to Celebrate: Why I'm an Anti-Anti-American (June 2003)

World, Home, Problem, Evil

“The End of History was never linked to a specifically American model of social or political organisation. Following Alexandre Kojève, the Russian-French philosopher who inspired my original argument, I believe that the European Union more accurately reflects what the world will look like at the end of history than the contemporary United States. The EU's attempt to transcend sovereignty and traditional power politics by establishing a transnational rule of law is much more in line with a "post-historical" world than the Americans' continuing belief in God, national sovereignty, and their military.”

Francis Fukuyama (1952) American political scientist, political economist, and author

In "The history at the end of history" http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/apr/03/thehistoryattheendofhist, The Guardian, 3 April 2007. 2000s

God, World, Law

“We have to be realistic about the history of [touch-screen] technology. We have to remember that this is not new — this has been done, this has been tried before.”

Mike Lazaridis (1961) Canadian businessman

RIM's Lazaridis: Qwerty is the next big thing http://news.com/RIMs-Lazaridis-Qwerty-is-the-next-big-thing/2100-1041_3-6239705.html?tag=nefd.top in CNET (16 May 2008)

“History is bright and fiction dull with homely men who have charmed women.”

O. Henry book Roads of Destiny

"Next to Reading Matter"
Roads of Destiny (1909)

Women, Men, Home

“[O]ne's political ideology is inextricable from one's view of history.”

Brian Reynolds Myers (1963) American professor of international studies

2010s, "Heaven is Helping Us": More from the Nationalist Left (August 2018)

“You must pursue facts for their own sake, but penetrated with a vivid sense of the problems of your own time. This is not a principle of perversion, but a principle of selection. You must have some principle of selection, and you could not have a better one than to pay special attention to the history of the social problems which are agitating the world now, for you may be sure that they are problems not of temporary but of lasting importance.”

Arnold Toynbee (1852–1883) British economic historian

Source: Lectures on The Industrial Revolution in England (1884), p. 32

World, Problem, Sense, Time

“Note the startling regularity through history with which society martyrs the rebel in one generation and worships him in the next. Socrates, Jesus, William Blake, Buddha, Krishna — the list is as endless as it is rich.”

Rollo May (1909–1994) US psychiatrist

Source: Power and Innocence (1972), Ch. 11 : The Humanity of the Rebel

“I have devoted most of my time during the last six months to the study of Muslim History and Muslim Law and I am inclined to think that Hindu-Muslim unity is neither possible not practicable… I do honestly and sincerely believe in the necessity and desirability of Hindi-Muslim unity. I am also fully prepared to trust the Muslim leaders, but what about the injunctions of the Koran and Hadis. The leaders cannot override them.”

Lala Lajpat Rai (1865–1928) Indian author and politician

Lala Lajpat Rai: Quoted in B.R. Ambedkar, Pakistan, Vol. 8 Writings and Speeches, also in K. Elst Decolonizing the Hindu Mind, Rupa 2001, and also quoted by A. Ghosh in "Making of the Muslim psyche" in Devendra Swarup, Politics of conversion, New Delhi, 1988, p148. http://www.ivarta.com/columns/OL_030114.htm http://eminentpeopleonislam.blogspot.com/2013/08/lala-lajpat-rai-1865-1928.html

Law, Thinking, Study, Time

“The cultural tradition of which the Greek language is the focal point has the longest unbroken history of any in Europe. The Greek state, however, was newly born out of the conflict of 1821-8 and was without precedent in the history of the Greeks. The newly defined nation therefore had, as a matter of urgency, to create its own past, that is, to select and endorse those elements of earlier Greek history which retrospectively could claim to have made the present existence and future aspirations of the nation inevitable. Since the state itself was in many ways the creation of European Romanticism, it was only natural that the means to hand for defining and justifying its existence should derive from the same source.”

Roy Porter (1946–2002) British historian

[Roderick Beaton, Mikuláš Teich & Roy Porter, Romanticism in national context, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 1988, 99, 0-521-33913-8]

Way, Nature, Past, Future

“A student of the history of physical science will assign to Newton a further importance which the average man can hardly appreciate. …the separation … of positive scientific inquiries from questions of ultimate causation.”

Edwin Arthur Burtt (1892–1989) American philosopher

Source: The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science (1925), p. 19

Question, Science

“There is a good reason that all of this killing is unknown. The authoritarian and totalitarian thug regimes that do most of the killing usually control who writes their histories and what appears in them.”

Rudolph Rummel (1932–2014) American academic

Source: The Blue Book of Freedom: Ending Famine, Poverty, Democide, and War (2007), p. 76

Appearance

“Thus the existing history of Jesus enlightens us more and more upon the object of his conduct and teaching, which entirely correspond with the first idea entertained of him by his apostles, i. e., that he was a worldly deliverer. It enlightens us also upon the fact that they had good reason to believe in him as such so long as he lived. It also shows that the master, and how much more his disciples found themselves mistaken and deceived by the condemnation and the death, and that the new system of a suffering spiritual Saviour, which no one had ever known or thought of before, was invented after the death of Jesus, and invented only because the first hopes had failed.”

Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694–1768) German philosopher

Source: Fragments from Reimarus: Consisting of Brief Critical Remarks on the Object of Jesus and His Disciples as Seen in the New Testament, p. 28

Death, Hope, Idea, Suffering

“I want to acclaim the day when America is the most eminent of the shipping nations. A big navy and a big merchant marine are necessary to the future of the country…The United States, before the war, never seriously contested and had no thought of contesting Great Britain’s dominance in shipping, but since, as an incident of the war, we installed a huge shipbuilding plant and became the owners of what was, for us, an unprecedented quantity of tonnage, we have come to be ambitious in this field. If the aggregate mind of our business world were distilled, it would probably be found, consciously or unconsciously, that we now have a national ambition to contest Great Britain’s shipping dominance. If we are to achieve a position in shipping and foreign trade comparable with that which Great Britain has had for many generations, we can only do so through time, patience, and the building up of the reputation for commercial skill and integrity that makes Great Britain’s prestige in every part of Asia and Africa…We are witnessing and participating in one of those great incidents in world-history which occur only once in several centuries, and which will be a subject for poets and historians for generations to come.”

Warren G. Harding (1865–1923) American politician, 29th president of the United States (in office from 1921 to 1923)

Speech at Norfolk, Virginia (4 December 1920), quoted in The Times (6 December 1920), p. 17.
1920s

War, World, Business, Time

“The establishing of the dominion of God on earth, the abolishing of the dominion of man, the taking away of sovereignty from the usurper to revert it to God, and the bringing about of the enforcement of the Divine Law (Shari’ah) and the abolition of man-made laws cannot be achieved only through preaching. Those who have usurped the authority of God and are oppressing God’s creatures are not going to give up their power merely through preaching; if it had been so, the task of establishing God’s religion in the world would have been very easy for the Prophets of God. This is contrary to the evidence from the history of the Prophets and the story of the struggle of the true religion, spread over generations.”

Sayyid Qutb (1906–1966) Egyptian author, educator, Islamic theorist, poet, and politician

Source: Ma'alim fi'l-Tariq (Signposts on the Road, or Milestones) (1964), Ch. 4, Jihad in the cause of Allah, p. 68.

God, World, Religion, Law

“Having been trained in history and the humanities, where one learns early on how depressing life can be, I am delighted to have ultimately switched to biology, where a delusional optimism still abounds.”

Eric R. Kandel (1929) American neuropsychiatrist

In Search of Memory (2006)

Life, Optimism, Learning, Training

“It might come as a surprise to many, but the truth is that Islam today no longer has a living and evolving theology. In fact, with few exceptions, Islam’s last genuine theologians belong to the early part of the 19th century. Go to any mosque anywhere, whether it is in New York or Mecca, and you are more likely to hear a political sermon rather than a theological reflection. In the highly politicized version of Islam promoted by Da’esh, al Qaeda, the Khomeinists in Iran, the Taliban in Afghanistan and Boko Haram in Nigeria, God plays a cameo role at best. Deprived of its theological moorings, today’s Islam is a wayward vessel under the captaincy of ambitious adventurers leading it into sectarian feuds, wars and terrorism. Many, especially Muslims in Europe and North America, use it as a shibboleth defining identity and even ethnicity. A glance at Islam’s history in the past 200 years highlights the rapid fading of theologians. Today, Western scholars speak of Wahhabism as if that meant a theological school. In truth, Muhammad Abdul-Wahhabi was a political figure. His supposedly theological writings consist of nine pages denouncing worship at shrines of saints. Nineteenth-century “reformers” such as Jamaleddin Assadabadi and Rashid Rada were also more interested in politics than theology. The late Ayatollah Khomeini, sometimes regarded as a theologian, was in fact a politician wearing clerical costume. His grandson has collected more than 100,000 pages of his writings and speeches and poetry. Of these, only 11 pages, commenting on the first and shortest verse of the Koran, could be regarded as dabbling in theology, albeit not with great success.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

"The mad dream of a dead empire that unites Islamic rebels" http://nypost.com/2014/06/14/the-mad-dream-of-a-dead-empire-that-unites-islamic-rebels/, New York Post (June 14, 2014). New York Post

God, War, Truth, School

“A great man" […] "and the greatest and most representative of the Spanish people of the 20th century" […] "one of the great leaders we have had in our history.”

Manuel Fraga Iribarne (1922–2012) Spanish politician

The day Francisco Franco, the dictator, died. Frases que reflejan el recorrido de Manuel Fraga, 16th January 2012, Gara, 16th January 2012, castellà http://www.gara.net/azkenak/01/315809/es/Frases-que-reflejan-recorrido-Manuel-Fraga, Franco and Francoism

People

“I read with great interest all that you have written me about what is called Colonialism, namely: bringing forward backward races and opening up the jungles. I was brought up to feel proud of much that we had done. Certainly in India, with all its history, religion and ancient forms of despotic rule, Britain has a story to tell which will look quite well against the background of the coming hundred years. … I am sceptical about universal suffrage for the Hottentots even if refined by proportional representation. The British and American Democracies were slowly and painfully forged and even they are not perfect yet.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Letter to President Eisenhower (8 August 1954), quoted in Martin Gilbert, Never Despair': Winston S. Churchill, 1945–1965 (London: Heinemann, 1988), pp. 1040-1041. Cf. Lord Salisbury: "You would not confide free representative institutions to the Hottentots".
Post-war years (1945–1955)

Religion, Feeling, Democracy, Universe