Quotes about history (5667 quotes, page 35)

“On the day of Pentecost Christianity faced the world, a new religion, without a history, without a priesthood, without a college, without a people, and without a patron. She had only her two sacraments and her tongue of fire. The latter was her sole instrument of aggression.”

William Arthur (minister) (1819–1901) Wesleyan Methodist minister and author

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 322.

People , World , Religion

“The friends of peace in bourgeois circles believe that world peace and disarmament can be realised within the frame-work of the present social order, whereas we, who base ourselves on the materialistic conception of history and on scientific socialism, are convinced that militarism can only be abolished from the world with the destruction of the capitalist class state.”

Rosa Luxemburg (1871–1919) Polish Marxist theorist, socialist philosopher, and revolutionary

Die Friedensfreunde aus bürgerlichen Kreisen glauben, das sich Weltfriede und Abrüstung im Rahmen der heutigen Gesellschaftsordnung verwirklichen lassen, wir aber, die wir auf dem Boden der materialistischen Geschichtsauffassung und des wissenschaftlichen Sozialismus stehen, sind der Überzeugung, das der Militarismus erst mit dem kapitalistischen Klassenstaate zusammen aus der Welt geschafft werden kann.
Peace Utopias (1911)

World , Peace

“Writing in 1944, the year of the Bretton Woods Conference, Polanyi suggested that the extension of the institutions of the market over the course of the nineteenth century aroused a political reaction in the form of associations and lobbies that ultimately undermined the stability of the market system. He gave the gold standard a place of prominence among the institutions of laissez faire in response to which this reaction had taken place. And he suggested that the opening of national economic decision making to parties representing working-class interests had contributed to the downfall of that international monetary system. In a sense, this book asks whether Polanyi’s thesis stands the test of time. Can the international monetary history of the second half of the twentieth century be understood as the further unfolding of Polanyian dynamics, in which democratization again came into conflict with economic liberalization in the form of free capital mobility and fixed exchange rates? Or do recent trends toward floating rates and monetary unification point to ways of reconciling freedom and stability in the two domains?”

Barry Eichengreen Introduction

Source: Globalizing Capital (2008), Chapter 1. Introduction

Books , Way , Decision , Sense

“Hey folks, tonight I wanna talk about global warming. Now, The World is Hot and Flat Society is growing increasingly hysterical and that indeed is causing me to sweat a little. In the last month or so, I've heard suggestions that those skeptical of Al Gore's spiritual crisis are deniers and one good way to serve the planet would be to have one less kid and I've also read that mankind is 'a virus' and human beings are 'the AIDS of the earth.' Global warming is officially becoming creepy and I can't tell yet if it's facisitc or fetishistic but it's kinda like piercing or tattoos, I don't even wanna get one, because I see how hooked people are and it spooks me. I just find it odd that we've come to a point in history where if I don't concede that if Manhattan will be completely submerged in 2057 I'm thought to be a delusional contrarian by some of my more zealous fellow citizens. I'm sorry Angst Squad, but if we commissioned a public works project (let's call it 'The Manhattan Project') and tried our hardest to submerge Manhattan in the next 50 years, we couldn't pull it off, mainly because it wouldn't be environmentally sound and you guys would hang it up in the permitting process. Simply put, I can't worry about the earth right now because I'm too worried about the world. Why can't I take terrorism as seriously as Al Gore takes global warming? There are times that you think that liberals only fear car bombs if they have leaky exhaust systems. And why am I constantly beaten over the head with 'the delicate balance of nature'? Am I the only one who watches Animal Planet? Every time I turn it on, I see some demented harp seal chucking peguins down his gullet like they were maitre d'Tic-Tacs. To me, nature always appears more unbalanced than Gary Busey with a clogged eustachian tube. Listen, the weather is just like Hilary's explanation for her war vote: we just don't know, do we? We're here to miss our next Tuesday's weather much less the year 2057. Relax, we'll replace oil when we need to. American ingenuity will kick in and the next great fortune will be made. It's not pretty, but it is historically accurate. We need to run out of oil first. That's why I drive an SUV: so we run out of it more quickly. I consider myself at the vanguard of the environmental movement and I think the individuals who insist on driving hybrids are just prolonging our dillemma and I think that's just selfish. Come on, don't you care about our Mother Earth? Don'tcha?”

Dennis Miller (1953) American stand-up comedian, television host, and actor

6/17 The Half Hour News Hour
The Buck Starts Here

War , People , World , Fear

“Our presence will serve as an incentive for al Qaeda to grow in numbers and motivate more suicide bombers. An indefinite presence, whether in Iraq, Afghanistan, or Pakistan, will continue to drain our financial resources, undermine our national defense, demoralize our military and exacerbate our financial crisis. All this will be welcomed by Osama Bin Laden, just as he planned it. It's actually more than he had hoped for. […] The war in Afghanistan and Pakistan will be much bigger, unless the dollar follows the path of the dollar-based world financial system and collapses into runaway inflation. In this case, the laws of economics and the realities of history will prove superior to the madness of maintaining a world empire financed by scraps of paper. Our military prowess, backed by a nuclear arsenal, will not suffice in overcoming the tragedy of a currency crisis. Soviet nukes did not preserve its empire or the communist economy.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

The end is not near https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuPeExhmuQQ, (4 March 2009)
2000s, 2006-2009

War , World , Law , Hope

“No man can fully grasp how far and how fast we have come, but condense, if you will, the 50 thousand years of man's recorded history in a time span of but a half-century. Stated in these terms, we know very little about the first 40 years, except at the end of them advanced man had learned to use the skins of animals to cover them. Then about 10 years ago, under this standard, man emerged from his caves to construct other kinds of shelter. Only five years ago man learned to write and use a cart with wheels. Christianity began less than two years ago. The printing press came this year, and then less than two months ago, during this whole 50-year span of human history, the steam engine provided a new source of power. Newton explored the meaning of gravity. Last month electric lights and telephones and automobiles and airplanes became available. Only last week did we develop penicillin and television and nuclear power, and now if America's new spacecraft succeeds in reaching Venus, we will have literally reached the stars before midnight tonight.
This is a breathtaking pace, and such a pace cannot help but create new ills as it dispels old, new ignorance, new problems, new dangers. Surely the opening vistas of space promise high costs and hardships, as well as high reward.
So it is not surprising that some would have us stay where we are a little longer to rest, to wait. But this city of Houston, this state of Texas, this country of the United States was not built by those who waited and rested and wished to look behind them. This country was conquered by those who moved forward — and so will space.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

Source: 1962, Rice University speech

Star , Problem , Light , Learning

“Not only the tools of manual labour, but also the tools of human thought — words — are subject to the laws of historical development. The history of the meanings of words is outside the area of interest of formal logic, and could not be fruitfully studied by the methods of that discipline.
The history of language in what is its most essential content is the history of language as a social instrument of thought; it is historical epistemology which cannot be studied within the scope of any other discipline.
The linguist is of necessity only marginally interested in all conventional terminology, whereas certain votaries of formal logic are inclined to investigate domains which are alien to linguistics and even to some extent in contradiction to its basic assumptions!”

Witold Doroszewski (1899–1976) Lexicographer and linguist

As cited in Schaff (1962;7).
"Comments on Semantics", 1952

Law , Study

“Today’s smut is tomorrow’s fine art. The profane, with the passage of time becomes sacred. Having suffered under a reactionary ontological hermeneutics for the last fifty years, the extremist movement constitutes an emergent phenomenon which is more than the sum of the processes from which it has emerged. Interpretation theory rewarded by dominant culture would have us believe that history is objective when in fact its subjective nature is based on hierarchical systems of exploitation benefiting a global elite.”

Nick Zedd (1958) American film maker

Quoted in: Nick Zedd’s The Extremist Manifesto http://www.undergroundfilmjournal.com/nick-zedds-the-extremist-manifesto/ By Mike Everleth, March 7, 2013
The Extremist Manifesto, 2013

Art , Nature , Suffering , Time

“The mystery, the romance, the coincidence of real life far transcends the mystery and the romance and the coincidence of fiction. I would like at the beginning of my remarks to remind hon. Members of something that has always struck me as one of the strangest and most romantic coincidences that have entered into our political life. Far away in time, in the dawn of history, the greatest race of the many races then emerging from prehistoric mists was the great Aryan race. When that race left the country which it occupied in the western part of Central Asia, one great branch moved west, and in the course of their wanderings they founded the cities of Athens and Sparta; they founded Rome; they made Europe, and in the veins of the principal nations of Europe flows the blood of their Aryan forefathers. The speech of the Aryans which they brought with them has spread through out Europe. It has spread to America. It has spread to the Dominions beyond the seas. At the same time, one branch went south, and they crossed the Himalayas. They went into the Punjab and they spread through India, and, as an historic fact, ages ago, there stood side by side in their ancestral land the ancestors of the English people and the ancestors of the Rajputs and of the Brahmins. And now, after aeons have passed, the children of the remotest generations from that ancestry have been brought together by the inscrutable decree of Providence to set themselves to solve the most difficult, the most complicated political problem that has ever been set to any people of the world.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1929/nov/07/india in the House of Commons (7 November 1929).
1929

Life , Children , People , Age

“Through our own folly and refusal to face realities and deal with evil tendencies while they were yet controllable, we have allowed brutal and intolerant forces to gain almost unchallenged supremacy in Europe and have placed ourselves in a position of weakness and peril, the like of which our history does not record for two and a half centuries.”

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

Speech to the New Commonwealth Society (15 July 1936), quoted in Martin Gilbert, Prophet of Truth: Winston S. Churchill, 1922–1939 (London: Minerva, 1990), p. 764
The 1930s

Reality , Evil

“What made Obama unique was that he was the ultimate charismatic politician -- the most unknown stranger ever to achieve the presidency in the United States. No one knew who he was, he came out of nowhere, he had this incredible persona that floated him above the fray, destroyed Hillary, took over the Democratic Party and became president. This is truly unprecedented: A young unknown with no history, no paper trail, no well-known associates, self-created.”

Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) American journalist

Interview with Der Spiegel http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/a-656501.html published on October 26, 2009.
2000s, 2009

“My illness is alive, the threats to my life are real; yet it is only my death I feel, only the lessening made by my own loss. I am gone, Kohler, right now; and who is so dead as one so dead to a moment of life that life can't raise him up? Not to be here, not to see tomorrow—which, when I see it I shall find as stupid and empty as I found today—is appalling, Kohler, appalling… to slip into the insignificance of history like a thought held in a dream…”

William H. Gass book The Tunnel

Source: The Tunnel (1995), p. 250

Life , Death , Stupidity , Dreams

“This history of the international monetary system is short in two senses of the word. First, I concentrate on a short period: the century and a half from 1850 to today. Many of the developments I describe have roots in earlier eras, but to draw out their implications I need only consider this relatively short time span. Second, I have sought to write a short book emphasizing thematic material rather than describing international monetary arrangements in exhaustive detail.”

Barry Eichengreen (1952) Economist

Preface
Globalizing Capital (2008)

Books , Sense , Time , Drawing

“We are at a unique moment in history -- when a woman’s body is affected, we say the choice is hers; but when a boy’s body is affected, we say the choice is not his -- the law requires our 18 year old sons to register for the draft, and therefore potential death-if-needed.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: Father and Child Reunion (2001), p. 132.

Death , Law , Boy

“There may have been sometime in the history of the world a worse religion than Old School Presbyterianism, but if there ever was, from cannibalism to civilization, I have never heard of it.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

My Reviewers Reviewed (lecture from June 27, 1877, San Francisco, CA)

World , School , Religion

“The figure of the gunman in the window was inextricable from the victim and his history. This sustained Oswald in his cell. It gave him what he needed to live. The more time he spent in a cell, the stronger he would get. Everybody knew who he was now.”

Don DeLillo (1936) American novelist, playwright and essayist

In Dallas, pt. 2 (1988).

Time

“It could be that our longing for Revolution is like our longing for perfect love, the impulse we all have for union that was for so long met by religion. However we assign these yearnings, it is difficult to ignore the obvious need for change. Some of us will ascribe it to romantic love, some to consumerism, some to utopianism. It doesn’t really matter. What is important is that for the first time in history we have the means to implement a truly representative system, the means to globally communicate it, and the conditions that require it.”

Russell Brand book Revolution

Revolution (2014)

Love , Religion , Communication , Change

“We have the richest language that ever a people has accreted, and we use it as if it were the poorest. We hoard up our infinite wealth of words between the boards of dictionaries and in speech dole out the worn bronze coinage of our vocabulary. We are the misers of philological history. And when we can save our pennies and pass the counterfeit coin of slang, we are as happy as if we heard a blind beggar thank us for putting a pewter sixpence into his hat.”

William J. Locke book The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne

The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne (1905), p. 97.

People , Wealth , Happiness

“Our history shows that what we must do is assert domination over the machine, to guide it so that it works for the values of our choice.”

Charles A. Reich book The Greening of America

Source: The Greening of America (1970), Chapter XII : The Greening Of America, p. 351

“The type of man who lives nowadays in the Romanian political scene, I have already found in history: under his rule, nations died and states were destroyed.”

Corneliu Zelea Codreanu (1899–1938) Romanian politician

For My Legionaries: The Iron Guard (1936), Politics

“Written history, like the missionary position, is an act executed from the top looking down.”

Jim Goad (1961) Author, publisher

The Redneck Manifesto: How Hillbillies, Hicks and White Trash Became America's Scapegoats (Simon & Schuster, 1997)

“Dayton shook the leadership elite of post-Cold War Europe. The Europeans were grateful to the United States for the leading the effort that finally ended the war in Bosnia, but some European officials were embarassed that American involvement had been necessary. Jacque Poos's 1991 assertion that Europe's "hour had dawned" lay in history's dustbin, alongside James Baker's view that we had no dog in that fight. "One cannot call it an American peace", French Foreign Minister de Charette told the press, "even if President Clinton and the Americans have tried to pull the blanket over to their side. The fact is that the Americans looked at this affair in ex-Yugoslavia from a great distance for nearly four years and basically blocked the progression of things." But de Charette also acknowledged that "Europe as such was not present, and this, it is true, was a failure of the European Union." Prime Minister Alain Juppé, after praising the Dayton agreement, could not resist adding, "Of course, it resembles like a twin the European plan we presented eighteen months ago" - when he was Foreign Minister. Agence France-Presse reported that many European diplomats were "left smarting" at Dayton. In an article clearly inspired by someone at the French Foreign Ministry, Le Figaro said that "Richard Holbrooke, the American mediator, did not leave his European collegues with good memories from the air base at Dayton." They quoted an unnamed Franch diplomat as saying, "He flatters, he lies, he humiliates: he is a sort of brutal and schizophrenic Mazarin." President Chirac's national security assistant, Jean-David Levitte, called to apologize for this comment, saying it did not represent the views of his boss. I replied that such minidramas were inevitable given the pressures and frustrations we faced at Dayton and were inconsequential considering that the war was over.”

Richard Holbrooke (1941–2010) American diplomat

Source: 1990s, To End a War (1998), p. 318

War , Peace , Dogs , Quotes

“I brewed potions in a vain search for life everlasting,
I read books, I sang songs of history,
And today I've come home to Cold Mountain
To pillow my head on the stream and wash my ears.”

Han-shan Chinese monk and poet

Cold Mountain: 100 Poems by the T'ang Poet Han-shan

Life , Books , Home , Search

“Frederick W. Taylor was the first man in recorded history who deemed work deserving of systematic observation and study. On Taylor's 'scientific management' rests, above all, the tremendous surge of affluence in the last seventy-five years which has lifted the working masses in the developed countries well above any level recorded before, even for the well-to-do. Taylor, though the Isaac Newton (or perhaps the Archimedes) of the science of work, laid only first foundations, however. Not much has been added to them since – even though he has been dead all of sixty years.”

Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant

Source: 1960s - 1980s, MANAGEMENT: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (1973), Part 1, p. 181

Study , Science , Dead , Country

“I'm truly honored by your support. Together, we accomplished what nobody thought was absolutely possible and you know what that is and we're only getting started and it's going to be beautiful, remember that. Tonight we close one chapter in history and we begin another. Our campaign received more primary votes than any GOP campaign in history, no matter who it is, no matter who they are, we received more votes. This is a great feeling. That's a great feeling. This is not a testament to me but a testament to all of the people who believed real change, not Obama change, but real change is possible. You've given me the honor to lead the Republican Party to victory this fall.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Victory speech after winning New Jersey and other states Tuesday night (7 June 2016) – TIME transcript http://time.com/4360872/donald-trump-new-jersey-victory-speech-transcript/
2010s, 2016, June

People , Beauty , Feeling , Support

“In the early stages of modern European history the absolute monarch was freed from the limitations based on medieval natural law. No longer subject to the control of any contract, he was able to raise himself from being a mere protector of order (Defensor Pads) to being its creator (Creator Pacis), and thereby he emerged as the first 'free' individual in the modern period. What happened at the beginning of modern Japanese history (that is, in the Meiji Restoration) was very different indeed. The amalgamation of spiritual authority with political power was regarded not as any new departure in the concept of sovereignty, but simply as a return to 'the ancient days of the Jimmu Foundation.”

Masao Maruyama (scholar)

Though the Emperor was regarded as the embodiment of ultimate value, he was infinitely removed from the possibility of creating values out of nothing.
Thought and Behaviour in Modern Japanese Politics (1963), Ch. 1 : Theory and Psychology of Ultra-Nationalism

Law , Departure , Nature

“Each moment in history is a fleeting time, precious and unique. But some stand out as moments of beginning, in which courses are set that shape decades or centuries.
This can be such a moment.
Forces now are converging that make possible, for the first time, the hope that many of man's deepest aspirations can at last be realized. The spiraling pace of change allows us to contemplate, within our own lifetime, advances that once would have taken centuries.
In throwing wide the horizons of space, we have discovered new horizons on earth.
For the first time, because the people of the world want peace, and the leaders of the world are afraid of war, the times are on the side of peace.”

Richard Nixon (1913–1994) 37th President of the United States of America

1960s, First Inaugural Address (1969)

War , People , World , Peace

“France has done more for even English history than England has.”

John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) British philosopher and political economist

John Stuart Mill. Michelet.On the writing of English history. Complete Works Vol 20. Page 221.http://files.libertyfund.org/pll/pdf/Mill_0223-20_EBk_v7.0.pdf

“"Whoever denies authority and fights against it is an anarchist," said Sebastien Faure. The definition is tempting in its simplicity, but simplicity is the first thing to guard against in writing a history of anarchism. Few doctrines or movements have been so confusedly understood in the public mind, and few have presented in their own variety of approach and action so much excuse for confusion.”

George Woodcock (1912–1995) Canadian writer of political biography and history, an anarchist thinker, an essayist and literary critic

Prologue http://www.ditext.com/woodcock/1.html
Anarchism : A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements (1962)

Fight

“You’re changing the course of history. I thought that sort of thing was strictly forbidden.”

Stephen R. Lawhead (1950) American writer

Source: The Skin Map (2010), p. 65

Change

“When we start fighting crime by any means necessary we become guilty of the same hypocrisy as law enforcement agencies throughout history that break the rules to get the villains, and so become villains themselves.”

Barrett Brown (1981) American journalist, essayist and satirist

The Guardian, "Barrett Brown statement: 'This is not the rule of law, it is the rule of law enforcement'" http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jan/22/barrett-brown-hacking-sentencing-full-statement-text, 22 January 2015.

Law , Fight

“The common view that internal freedom makes for humane and moral international behavior is supported neither by evidence nor by reason. The United States has a long history of imposing oppressive terrorist regimes in regions of the world within the reach of its power, such as the Caribbean and Central American sugar and banana republics […]. Since World War II, with the great extension of U. S. power, it has borne a heavy responsibility for the spread of a plague of neofascism, state terrorism, torture and repression through large parts of the undeveloped world. The United States has globalized the “banana republic.” This has occurred despite some modest ideological strain because the developments serve the needs of powerful and dominant interests, state and private, within the United States itself.”

Edward S. Herman (1925–2017) American journalist

Source: The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism, with Noam Chomsky, 1979, p. 1.

War , World , Behavior , Support

“The Big Bang theory has been extremely successful in describing the history and evolution of the Universe, and new experiments and observations continue to confirm the basic predictions of this theory. But we do not yet know the answer to the question
What is the Universe made of?
The evidence for dark matter and dark energy has rewritten this question, redirected our efforts to address it — and strengthened the motivation for finding an answer. Dark matter and dark energy cannot be explained by our current model of fundamental physics; deciphering these mysterious substances will require a leap into a new realm of understanding, a theoretical upheaval that will rival the changes brought about by quantum mechanics and general relativity.”

Evalyn Gates (1958)

Einstein's Telescope: The Hunt for Dark Matter and Dark Energy in the Universe (2009), Epilogue : Dark Matter and Dark Energy: Keys to the Next Revoution, p. 267

Motivation , Understanding , Question , Effort

“A car coughed, starting. Morning softly
Melting the air, lifted the half-covered chair
From underseas, kindled the looking-glass,
Distinguished the dresser and the white wall.
The bird called tentatively, whistled, called,
Bubbled and whistled, so! Perplexed, still wet
With sleep, affectionate, hungry and cold. So, so,
O son of man, the ignorant night, the travail
Of early morning, the mystery of the beginning
Again and again,
while history is unforgiven.”

Delmore Schwartz (1913–1966) American poet

"In the Naked Bed, in Plato's Cave" http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/in-the-naked-bed-in-plato-s-cave/
Selected Poems: Summer Knowledge (1959)

Cars , Bird , Sleep , Night

“In a piece written circa 1960 called 'The Twelve Caesars' he said that world events were the work of individuals and that the motives of those individuals were often frivolous, even casual. There is something of Suetonius and Plutarch in Vidal's unblushing readiness to view contemporary history in terms of character.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

'Unpatriotic Gore: Gore Vidal'
Essays and reviews, At the Pillars of Hercules (1979)

World , Motivation

“The major challenges facing humanity today are global – climate change, accessible fresh water, ever decreasing bio-diversity and over population. These problems call for global solutions and these solutions will require co-operation on a global scale unparalleled in history. Peace is the essential prerequisite to create the environment to achieve the levels of co-operation necessary.”

Steve Killelea (1949) Australian businessman

Peace and Sustainability: Cornerstones to survival in the 21st century http://www.visionofhumanity.org/images/content/Documents/2007%20GPI%20Final%20Discussion%20Paper.pdf (2007)

Peace , Problem , Water , Change

“Long ago, he had made that choice between work and life that can seldom be avoided at the highest levels of human endeavor … Any fool could shuffle genes, and most did. But whether or not history gave him credit, few men could have achieved what he had done — and was about to do.”

Arthur C. Clarke book The Fountains of Paradise

Source: The Fountains of Paradise (1979), Chapter 39 “The Wounded Sun” (p. 208)

Life , Men , Fools

“Don't let your flaws define you. Become who you are. Be the best version of yourself. If you're a nice person, just be nice. If you make art to please people or to make people like you—well, it's never going to happen. Before I was an actor, I was a human and a citizen. As an actor, your job is to inhabit different people's lives and honor their feelings and be empathetic to other people's struggles. Just because you are an actor, you are not immediately an activist. But if you do have the platform and the opportunity to speak out, then I think it is your civic duty—especially right now—to be on the right side of history. We only have so long on this planet.”

Zoey Deutch (1994) American actress

Marie Claire Fresh Faces 2017 https://www.marieclaire.com/celebrity/a26335/fresh-faces-2017/

People , Art , Feeling , Thinking

“I will not go into who is to blame for what now. I have always considered, and still do today, that Russians and Ukrainians are really one people. There are people who hold radical nationalist views both in Russia and in Ukraine. But overall, for the majority, we are one people, a people who share a common history and culture and are ethnically close. First we were divided, then we were set against each other, but we are not to blame for this. We must find our own way out of this situation. I am sure that common sense will prevail and that we will find a solution.”

Vladimir Putin (1952) President of Russia, former Prime Minister

Meeting of the Valdai Club, 2016-10-27.
http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/53151 () http://kremlin.ru/events/president/news/53151
On Ukraine

People , Way , Sense

“Legislative reform and revolution are not different methods of historic development that can be picked out at the pleasure from the counter of history, just as one chooses hot or cold sausages. Legislative reform and revolution are different factors in the development of class society. They condition and complement each other, and are at the same time reciprocally exclusive, as are the north and south poles, the bourgeoisie and proletariat.”

Rosa Luxemburg (1871–1919) Polish Marxist theorist, socialist philosopher, and revolutionary

Source: Reform or Revolution (1899), Ch. 8

Pleasure , Time

“Mankind has conceived history as a series of battles; hitherto it has considered fighting as the main thing in life.”

Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) Russian dramatist, author and physician

Note-Book of Anton Chekhov (1921)

Life , Fight

“History teaches us that there have been but few infringements of personal liberty by the state which have not been justified, as they are here, in the name of righteousness and the public good, and few which have not been directed, as they are now, at politically helpless minorities.”

Harlan F. Stone (1872–1946) United States federal judge

Minersville School District v. Gobitis, 310 U.S. 586 (1940).

Personality

“Among some of my military colleagues I nevertheless sense a lingering concern that the military served as the scapegoat of the war in Vietnam. I fail to share that concern. The military quite clearly did the job that the nation expected of it, and I am convinced that history will reflect more favorably upon the performance of the military than upon that of the politicians and policy makers. The American people can be proud that their military leaders scrupulously adhered to a basic tenet of our constitution prescribing civilian control of the military. As the soldier prays for peace he must be prepared to cope with the hardships of war and to bear its scars.”

William Westmoreland book A Soldier Reports

Closing words, p. 424-425.
A Soldier Reports (1976)

War , People , Peace , Sense

“How do you take over the world? I've tried everything. Doomsday devices of every kind, nuclear, thermonuclear, nanotechnological, gadgets that fit in a shoe box and that were visible from space. I've tried mass mind control; I've stolen the gold reserves in Fort Knox, only to lose them again. I've traveled backward in time to change history, forward in time to escape it; I've stopped time altogether to live in a world of statues. I've commanded robot armies, insect armies, and dinosaur armies. Fungus army. Army of fish. Of rodents. Alien invasion. Interdimensional alien invasion. Alien god invasion. Even a corporate takeover, Impossible Industries, LLC. Each time it ended the same way. I've been to jail twelve times.”

Austin Grossman book Soon I Will Be Invincible

Source: Soon I Will Be Invincible (2007), Ch. 5: Free at Last

God , World , Shoe , Way

“Joh. Mayor, in the first book of his "History of Scotland," contends much for the wholesomeness of oaten bread; it was objected to him, then living at Paris, that his countrymen fed on oats and base grain…. And yet Wecker out of Galen calls it horse-meat, and fitter juments than men to feed on.”

Robert Burton book The Anatomy of Melancholy

Section 2, member 2, subsection 1.
The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Part I

Men , Books , Horse

“"A natural scientist, examining a single atom, might well be able to asseverate the structure and history of the entire universe!"
Bah!" muttered Hurtiancz. "By the same token, a sensible man need listen to but a single word in order to recognize the whole for egregious nonsense."”

Jack Vance Dying Earth

Dying Earth (1950-1984), Rhialto the Marvellous (1984), "Morreion", Ch. 8

Nature , Universe

“Contrary to the cartoon history of ideas that prevails today, Darwinism’s threat to religion did not come principally from challenging the biblical account of creation. Until a few centuries ago the Genesis story was known to be a myth – a poetic way of rendering truths that would otherwise be inaccessible. At the beginning of the Christian religion, Augustine warned against the dangers of literalism. The Jewish scholars who preceded him always viewed the Genesis story as a metaphor for truths that could not be accessed in any other way. It was only with the rise of modern science that the Genesis myth came to be misunderstood as an explanatory theory. Yet Darwinism was still a major threat to religion, for it confronted Victorians with the prospect of their final mortality. Darwin forced them to ask why their lives should not end like those of other animals, in nothingness. If this was so, how could human existence have meaning? How could human values be maintained if human personality was destroyed at death?”

John Gray (1948) British philosopher

Cross-correspondences (pp. 21-22)
The Immortalization Commission: The Strange Quest to Cheat Death (2011)

Death , Truth , Religion , Way

“For the first time in human history a child is born into a home in which television is on an average of about seven hours a day. In some countries a little more in some countries a little less, but in all industrial countries this is about the situation. And for the first time in human history most of the stories are told not by the parent, not by the school, not by the church, not by the tribe or the community, and in many places not even by the native country, but by a relatively small and shrinking group of global conglomerates who have something to sell. And it changes in a very fundamental way, the cultural climate, the cultural environment into which our children are born, in which they grow up, in which they become socialized, in which they become human beings.”

George Gerbner (1919–2005) American writer, freelancer and sociologist

The Killing Screens: Media and the Culture of Violence, Media Education Foundation (1994) Online transcript http://www.mediaed.org/assets/products/111/transcript_111.pdf

Children , School , Way , Home

“History has never seen Emmitt Smith. I don't care what has come before me. That's why they call it history you create new history.”

Emmitt Smith (1969) American football player and sports broadcaster

Rick Gosselin (August 10, 2003) "Making another rush at history - Smith shooting for 1,000-yard season", Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, p. C8.

“There is little to envy in the woman's position either. For perhaps the first time in history, she has a general sense of herself as an individual apart from men. This self-confidence gives her drive and makes her want to succeed. As a result she is eager to join the system. She does not have a clear idea of what it will do to her. Her focus is on her own past and on what men did to women — not on the male structure and what it does to men.”

John Ralston Saul (1947) Canadian author and essayist

Voltaire's Bastards (1992)

Women , Men , Confidence , Idea

“"What?! Where the hell did that come from?!" … "Behold! The worst textured panther in the history of video games!"”

TotalBiscuit (1984–2018) British game commentator

WTF Is…? series, Day One: Garry's Incident (October 1, 2013)

Game , Hell

“It's been a prevalent notion. Fallen sparks. Fragments of vessels broken at the Creation. And someday, somehow, before the end, a gathering back to home. A messenger from the Kingdom, arriving at the last moment. But I tell you there is no such message, no such home — only the millions of last moments… nothing more. Our history is an aggregate of last moments.”

Thomas Pynchon book Gravity's Rainbow

Gravity's Rainbow (1973)

Home

“Khe Sanh will stand in history, I am convinced, as a classic example of how to defeat a numerically superior besieging force by co-ordinated application of firepower.”

William Westmoreland book A Soldier Reports

Source: A Soldier Reports (1976), p. 336.

“When I came back to Ottawa I found myself faced with a very difficult parliamentary situation… I think it is fair to say that Mr St Laurent, on the basis of private discussions with the Opposition leaders, did not expect any serious division in the House of Commons over our policies on Suez. However, bitter division there was, and we were condemned strongly for deserting our two mother countries. The Conservative attack was led by Howard Green (who in June 1959 was to become Secretary of State for External Affairs). Green accused us of being the "chore boy" of the United States, of being a better friend to Nasser than to Britain and France, and claimed that our government "by its actions in the Suez crisis, has made this month of November 1956, the most disgraceful period for Canada in the history of this nation," and that it was "high time Canada had a government which will not knife Canada's best friends in the back." Any feeling of exaltation and conceit or euphoria at our success in avoiding a general war in the Middle East (if in fact we had avoided it by our actions) was dissipated for me by the vigour of the assaults on my conduct, my wisdom, my rectitude, my integrity, and my everything else by an embattled Conservative Opposition. It was a very vigorous debate reflected in the general election of the next year. But I have always believed, and I think the great weight of Canadian opinion strongly approved what we had done. Further, I am absolutely certain and will remain certain in my own mind that the New Commonwealth would have soon shattered over the issue had the British not backed down.”

Lester B. Pearson (1897–1972) 14th Prime Minister of Canada

Memoirs, Volume Two

Wisdom , War , Feeling , Boy

“The sages and heroes of history are receding from us, and history contracts the record of their deeds into a narrow and narrower page. But time has no power over the name and deeds and words of Jesus Christ.”

William Ellery Channing (1780–1842) United States Unitarian clergyman

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 61

Time , Christ

“Rab said he thought that the good clean tradition of English politics, that of Pitt as opposed to Fox, had been sold to the greatest adventurer of modern political history. He had tried earnestly and long to persuade Halifax to accept the Premiership, but he had failed. He believed this sudden coup of Winston and his rabble was a serious disaster and an unnecessary one: the 'pass has been sold' by Mr. C[hamberlain], Lord Halifax and Oliver Stanley. They had weakly surrendered to a half-breed American whose main support was that of inefficient but talkative people of a similar type.”

Rab Butler (1902–1982) British politician

John Colville's diary entry for 10 May 1940, The Fringes of Power. Downing Street Diaries. 1939-1955 (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1985), p. 122.

People , Support

“The great masses, who have never been, in the history of mankind, more subject to hypnotic suggestion than they are right now, have become the puppets of the “public opinion” that is engineered by the newspapers in the service, it need hardly be emphasized, of the reigning powers of finance. What is printed in the morning editions of the big city newspapers is the opinion of nine out of ten readers by nightfall. The United States of America, whose more rapid “progress” enables us to predict the future on a daily basis, has pulled far ahead of the pack when it comes to standardizing thought, work, entertainment, etc.”

Ludwig Klages (1872–1956) German psychologist and philosopher

Sämtliche Werke, vol. 4, p. 408, as translated by Joseph Pryce

Future

“The ordinary man casts a shadow. In a way we do not quite understand, the man of genius casts light. Instinctively, we flinch from this light. We assure ourselves that genius must pay a terrible price. Often history bears us out: the creator, the supreme artist, the master of politics carries the scars of his greatness.”

George Steiner (1929–2020) American writer

"Not a Preface, but a Word of Thanks," foreword to Unfinished Journey by Yehudi Menuhin (1977).

Way , Understanding , Light

“What’s the point of history, if it has nothing to say to the present?”

Justina Robson book Natural History

Source: Natural History (2003), Chapter 5 “Ancient History” (p. 56)

““Our ideas” are only partly our ideas. Most of our ideas are abbreviations or residues of the thought of other people, of our teachers (in the broadest sense of the term) and of our teachers’ teachers; they are abbreviations and residues of the thought of the past. These thoughts were once explicit and in the center of consideration and discussion. It may even be presumed that they were once perfectly lucid. By being transmitted to later generations they have possibly been transformed, and there is no certainty that the transformation was effected consciously and with full clarity. … This means that the clarification of our political ideas insensibly changes into and becomes indistinguishable from the history of political ideas.”

Leo Strauss (1899–1973) Classical philosophy specialist and father of neoconservativism

Source: What is Political Philosophy (1959), p. 73

People , Idea , Sense , Teachers

“It is only when social movements have receded into past history… that the Church with pride turns around to claim that it was she who abolished slavery, aroused the people to liberty, and emancipated woman.”

Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918) United States Baptist theologian

Source: Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907), Ch.4 Why Has Christianity Never Undertaken the Work of Social Reconstruction?, p. 150

People , Past

“Never in the history of the world has an alien ruler granted self-rule to a people on a silver platter.”

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

The Autobiography of Kwame Nkrumah

People , World

“[T]he prediction of [my disruption] theory would be that Apple won't succeed with the iPhone. They've launched an innovation that the existing players in the industry are heavily motivated to beat: It's not [truly] disruptive. History speaks pretty loudly on that, that the probability of success is going to be limited.”

Clayton M. Christensen (1952–2020) Mormon academic

"Clayton Christensen's Innovator's Dilemma says iPhone will fail" in Jeremy's Blog (28 June 2007) http://jeremy.linuxquestions.org/2007/06/28/clayton-christensens-innovators-dilemma-says-iphone-will-fail
2000s

Motivation , Success

“So if despite that, Hitler prepared war, he perpetrated the greatest lie and betrayal in the world. This trial clearly shows that Hitler did just that. I have no hesitation to state very clearly that Hitler was a liar and a betrayer on a mammoth scale. Even without the death of the 5 million extermination camp victims, Hitler would still go down in history as the greatest villain that ever lived.”

Hans Fritzsche (1900–1953) German Nazi official

To Leon Goldensohn, April 6, 1946, from "The Nuremberg Interviews" - by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004

Death , War , Lie , World

“Even a very general knowledge of Indian history already shows that any instances of Hindu persecution of Buddhism could never have been more than marginal. After fully seventeen centuries of Buddhism's existence, from the 6 th century BC to the late 12 th century AD, most of it under the rule of Hindu kings, we find Buddhist establishments flourishing all over India. Under king Pushyamitra Shunga, often falsely labelled as a persecutor of Buddhism, important Buddhist centres such as the Sanchi stupa were built. As late as the early 12 th century, the Buddhist monastery Dharmachakrajina Vihara at Sarnath was built under the patronage of queen Kumaradevi, wife of Govindachandra, the Hindu king of Kanauj in whose reign the contentious Rama temple in Ayodhya was built. This may be contrasted with the ruined state of Buddhism in countries like Afghanistan or Uzbekistan after one thousand or even one hundred years of Muslim rule. Indeed, the Muslim chroniclers themselves have described in gleeful detail how they destroyed Buddhism root and branch in the entire Gangetic plain in just a few years after Mohammed Ghori's victory in the second battle of Tarain in 1192. The famous university of Nalanda with its fabulous library burned for weeks. Its inmates were put to the sword except for those who managed to flee. The latter spread the word to other Indian regions where Buddhist monks packed up and left in anticipation of further Muslim conquests. It is apparent that this way, some abandoned Buddhist establishments were taken over by Hindus; but that is an entirely different matter from the forcible occupation or destruction of Buddhist institutions by the foreign invaders.”

Pushyamitra Shunga King of Sunga Dynasty

Koenraad Elst: Religious Cleansing of Hindus, 2004, Agni conference in The Hague, and in: K. Elst The Problem with Secularism, 2007

Way , Knowledge , Universe , Victory

“I knew that it was human nature which lay at the root of History and that no matter where I found myself I was bound to discover superficial similarities expressing and exemplifying that nature. It was human idealism and human impatience and human despair which continued to produce these terrible wars. Human virtues and vices, mixed and confused in individuals, created what we called “History”. Yet I could see no way in which the vicious circle of aspiration and desperation might ever be broken. We were all victims of our own imagination.”

Michael Moorcock book The Steel Tsar

Book 2, Chapter 1 “The Camp on Rishiri” (p. 339)
The Steel Tsar (1981)

War , Way , Imagination , Nature

“History, when she adds pleasure to utility, may attract more admirers; though as long as she is possessed of that greatest of perfections, truth, she need not be anxious concerning beauty.”

Lucian (120) ancient Greek writer

How to Write History

Pleasure , Truth , Beauty , Perfection

“Joy can come alive like that, when random pieces of history and rhythm, pause and expectation, melody and lyric, suddenly rearrange themselves into a pattern that leaps up, back against the wall, and catches your heart.”

Andrea Lewis (writer) Microsoft employee

"Forty Years" Slow Trains Vol.7, Issue 3 (2008)
2000-09

Heart , Joy

“The man responsible for keeping Americans safe from another terrorist attack on American soil for nearly seven years now will go down in history as one of America's greatest presidents.”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

"Bush's America: 100 Percent Al-Qaida Free Since 2001" (11 June 2008) http://www.anncoulter.com/cgi-local/article.cgi?article=256.
2008

“While it is much preferable to anarchy, government cannot abolish the evils of the human condition. At any time the state is only one of the forces that shape human behaviour, and its power is never absolute. At present, fundamentalist religion and organized crime, ethnic-national allegiances and market forces all have the ability to elude the control of government, sometimes to overthrow or capture it. States are at the mercy of events as much as any other human institution, and over the longer course of history all of them fail. As Spinoza recognized, there is no reason to think the cycle of order and anarchy will ever end. Secular thinkers find this view of human affairs dispiriting, and most have retreated to some version of the Christian view in which history is a narrative of redemption. The most common of these narratives are theories of progress, in which the growth of knowledge enables humanity to advance and improve its condition. Actually, humanity cannot advance or retreat, for humanity cannot act: there is no collective entity with intentions or purposes, only ephemeral struggling animals each with its own passions and illusions. The growth of scientific knowledge cannot alter this fact. Believers in progress – whether social democrats or neo-conservatives, Marxists, anarchists or technocratic Positivists – think of ethics and politics as being like science, with each step forward enabling further advances in future. Improvement in society is cumulative, they believe, so that the elimination of one evil can be followed by the removal of others in an open-ended process. But human affairs show no sign of being additive in this way: what is gained can always be lost, sometimes –as with the return of torture as an accepted technique in war and government – in the blink of an eye. Human knowledge tends to increase, but humans do not become any more civilized as a result. They remain prone to every kind of barbarism, and while the growth of knowledge allows them to improve their material conditions, it also increases the savagery of their conflicts.”

John Gray book Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia

Post-Apocalypse: After Secularism (pp. 264-5)
Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia (2007)

War , Religion , Way , Knowledge

“All those whom history calls great
Left only empty names for us to venerate.”

Cao Xueqin book Dream of the Red Chamber

Source: Dream of the Red Chamber (c. 1760), Chapter 5

“I don't sit at the same table with people like Sisi. They invited us to a dinner at the same table at the UN General Assembly. I did not attend that dinner. Next day, they did the same, I did not attend again. Why? Because that picture would be a black stain for me in the history books. It is impossible for me to sit at the same table with a coup leader. The world knows our attitude on the issue.”

Abdel Fattah el-Sisi (1954) Current President of Egypt

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as reported by Anadolu Agency on 3 June 2015 http://aa.com.tr/en/politics/erdogan-did-not-attend-un-dinner-to-avoid-egypts-sisi/40683
About

People , Books , World

“The classical argument for why a supposedly decent and moral creature like Homo sapiens can mistreat and even extirpate other species rests upon an extreme position in a continuum. The Cartesian tradition, formulated explicitly in the seventeenth century, but developed in "folk" and other versions throughout human history no doubt, holds that other animals are little more than unfeeling machines, with only humans enjoying "consciousness," however defined.”

Stephen Jay Gould book Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms

"Can We Truly Know Sloth and Rapacity?" pp. 389
Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms (1998)

Animals

“Through the lens of the Jock/Nerd Theory of History, the welfare state doesn’t look like a serious effort to "equalize outcomes." It looks more like a serious effort to block the "revenge of the nerds"—to keep them from using their financial success to unseat the jocks on every dimension of social status.”

Bryan Caplan (1971) American political scientist

Redistribution: Blocking the Revenge of the Nerds? http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2007/06/redistribution_1.html (June 21, 2007)

Revenge , Effort , Success

“It would be hard to find a single example in history in which a group that cast more than 50 percent of the vote got away with calling itself the victim… Women are the only 'oppressed' group to share the same parents as the 'oppressor'; to be born into the middle class and upper class as frequently as the 'oppressor'; to own more of the culture's luxury items than the 'oppressor'…”

Warren Farrell book The Myth of Male Power

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part 1: The Myth of Male Power, p. 40.

Women , Parent

“Jaisi, Rahim, Raskhan and Dara Shukoh, though no conventional philosophers, are rare phenomenon. Recognized leading lights of Islamic philosophy like Shaikh Ahmad Sarhindi, Shah Waliullah and Shah Ismail Shahid, find no place in the histories of Indian philosophy.”

K. S. Lal book The Legacy of Muslim Rule in India

Source: The Legacy of Muslim Rule in India (1992), Chapter 8

Light

“…he feels a stifling uselessness in things, a kind of atomic decay whereby the precious glowing present turns, with each tick of the clock, into the leaden slag of history.”

John Updike book Rabbit at Rest

Rabbit at Rest (1990)

Feeling

“The case had caused considerable excitement among the “believers” (Mu'mins) and interest among the “infidels” (KAfirs) in April-May, 1985. The press in India and abroad gave many headlines to what was rightly regarded as an unprecedented event in the history of religion. It was the first time that a Pagan had questioned the character of a document hailed as the very Word of God by a People of the Book. The roles now stood reversed. So far it had been the privilege of the Peoples of the Book to ban and burn the sacred literature of the Pagans.”

Sita Ram Goel book The Calcutta Quran Petition

The Calcutta Quran Petition (1986)

God , People , Books , Religion

“Women have conceptualized less in history not because men have kept them from doing so but because women do not need to conceptualize in order to exist. […] Fetishism, for instance, a practice which like most of the sex perversions is confined to men, is clearly a conceptualizing or symbol-making activity. Man’s vastly greater commercial patronage of pornography is analogous.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990), p. 20

Women , Men , Sex

“It is even possible to mount a serious, though not widely supported, historical case that Jesus never lived at all … Although Jesus probably existed, reputable biblical scholars do not in general regard the New Testament (and obviously not the Old Testament) as reliable record of what actually happened in history, and I shall not consider the Bible further evidence for any kind of deity.”

Richard Dawkins book The God Delusion

Source: The God Delusion (2006), p. 122

Support

“Do you know what I think of history? … For a while I thought history was something that bitter old men wrote. But Jack loved history so… No one'll ever know everything about Jack. But … history made Jack what he was … this lonely, little sick boy … scarlet fever … this little boy sick so much of the time, reading in bed, reading history … reading the Knights of the Round Table … and he just liked that last song.
Then I thought, for Jack history was full of heroes. And if it made him this way, if it made him see the heroes, maybe other little boys will see. Men are such a combination of good and bad … He was such a simple man. But he was so complex, too. Jack had this hero idea of history, the idealistic view, but then he had that other side, the pragmatic side… his friends were all his old friends; he loved his Irish Mafia.”

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (1929–1994) public figure, First Lady to 35th U.S. President John F. Kennedy

The "Camelot" interview (29 November 1963)

Love , Men , Way , Boy

“Throughout the history of Christianity, there had been a core of belief that man was not doomed to be everlastingly corrupt.”

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

The Romantic Agony, p. 158
The Corrupt Society - From Ancient Greece To Present-Day America (1975)

“In 1789, for the first time, at least in modern history and in the western world, there was set up an executive who was at one and the same time the chief of state, the leader of the legislature, the leader of a political party, the commander in chief of the military forces of the nation, and toe executive manager of the government.”

Louis Brownlow (1879–1963) American mayor

Louis Brownlow. "The Executive Office of the Presidency." Public Administration Review, Winter 1941, vol. 1. p. 102.

World , Time

“In the providential history of mankind, Adam fell on the individual level; Noah fell on the family level; Abraham on the tribal level (clan level); Moses, on the national level; and Jesus, both on the national and worldwide levels. All those things are not a history of victory at all. But when we think of centering on the man Noah -- he kept his faith, trying to carry out his mission for 120 long years -- but we have to excel his faith. Abraham was the father of faith, Moses was a man of faith, Jesus was the son of man, trying to carry out his mission at the cost of his life. But they are, in a way, failures. So, in order for us to accomplish our mission, our whole-sided mission, we must excel them in many ways. It makes it difficult for us to carry out our mission; but when we pour out our whole energy, our whole being, into this providence project, we can get the cooperation of the spirit world, making it possible. We must turn all things upside down like this, making it a reality, and making it a success. Jesus had a strong sense of purpose in his mission, but ours must be even stronger than that.”

Sun Myung Moon (1920–2012) Korean religious leader

"Victory or Defeat" http://www.tparents.org/Moon-Talks/sunmyungmoon73/SM730331.htm (1973-03-31)

Life , World , Family , Faith

“The defensiveness of Islam is its crucial feature today. It's what, by the way, is in such contrast to the most interesting period of Islamic history, when Islam was an open, absorbing religion, constantly taking in outside influences, as opposed to its current hedgehog-like posture, prickly to the outside … always looking backward. This is not how it was in the creative moment, in the first four, six, eight centuries of Islam, where it was constantly seeking out and absorbing.”

Kanan Makiya (1949) American orientalist

"Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero" http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/faith/interviews/makiya.html, PBS Frontline (2002)

Religion , Way

“Christianity is more than history; it is also a system of truths. Every event which its history records, either is a truth, or suggests a truth, or expresses a truth which man needs to assent to or to put into practice.”

Noah Porter (1811–1892) American academic

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 133.

Truth

“To be a Pole does not mean just to speak Polish or to feel close to other Poles, but to value the Polish nation above all else … [A Pole] must accept everything Polish, both good and bad, and must accept every period of the nation's history, both strong and weak.”

Roman Dmowski (1864–1939) Polish politician

Myśli nowoczesnego Polaka, 7th ed., 1953, p. 26.

Feeling , Strong

“The history of humorous writing discloses everchanging trends. Our fast-paced modern living is too impatient for the lengthy light verse and the leisurely essays of our forefathers.”

Evan Esar (1899–1995) American writer

Humorous English, p266

Light

“It is blood which moves the wheels of history.”

Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) Duce and President of the Council of Ministers of Italy. Leader of the National Fascist Party and subsequen…

Speech in Parma (13 December 1914) quoted in Foreign Affairs, May 1924, p 234 https://books.google.com/books?id=DsRYAAAAMAAJ&pg=RA1-PA234&lpg=RA1-PA234&dq=%22It+is+blood+which+moves+the+wheels+of+history!%22&source=bl&ots=v0BzInFnc_&sig=gEqKCdgCipviuomrOppXZrk6E_E&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjgtZuZvY_ZAhXJmeAKHWwWB_EQ6AEIUTAG#v=onepage&q=%22It%20is%20blood%20which%20moves%20the%20wheels%20of%20history!%22&f=false
1910s

“The student should have enough knowledge of his or her cultural tradition to know how it got to be the way it is. This involves both political and social history, on the one hand, as well as the mastery of some of the great philosophical and literary texts of the culture on the other. It involves reading not only texts that are of great value, like those of Plato, but many less valuable that have been influential, such as the works of Marx. For the United States, the dominant tradition is, and for the foreseeable future, will remain the European tradition. The United States is, after all, a product of the European Enlightenment. However, you do not understand your own tradition if you do not see it in relation to others. Works from other cultural traditions need to be studied as well.”

John Rogers Searle (1932) American philosopher

The Storm Over the University (December 6, 1990)

Way , Understanding , Knowledge , Study

“Newspapers are the second hand of history. This hand, however, is usually not only of inferior metal to the other hands, it also seldom works properly.”

Arthur Schopenhauer book Parerga and Paralipomena

Vol. 2, Ch. 19, § 233
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), Counsels and Maxims

“The global role of the United States is perhaps the ultimate chapter in that long period of European expansion which had begun in western Europe, and especially on the Atlantic seaboard, during the 15th century. Europe slowly had outgrown its homeland. Its cultural empire eventually formed a long band traversing most of the Northern Hemisphere and dipping far into the Southern. The modern hub of the peoples and ideas of European origin is now New York as much as Paris, or Los Angeles as much as London. In the history of the European peoples the city of Washington is perhaps what Constantinople - the infant city of Emperor Constantine - was to the last phase of the Roman Empire; for it is unlikely that Europeans, a century hence, will continue to stamp the world so decisively with their ideas and inventions.”

Geoffrey Blainey book A Short History of the World

A Short History of the World (2000)

People , World , Angels , Idea

“As Dr. Sigmund Freud has observed, it can not even be said that the State has ever shown any disposition to suppress crime, but only to safeguard its own monopoly of crime. … Taking the State wherever found, striking into its history at any point, one sees no way to differentiate the activities of its founders, administrators and beneficiaries from those of a professional-criminal class.”

Albert Jay Nock (1870–1945) American journalist

Source: Our Enemy, the State (1935), p. 50

Way

“Man’s search for metals goes back to prehistoric times. Metals have been used for several thousands of years in India. Certain periods in history are associated with specific periods used extensively during that period”

C. N. R. Rao (1934) Indian chemist

Source: Understanding Chemistry (1999), p. 28

Search , Time

“A third story, about a 12th century king Harsha of Kashmir, is apparently true but has nothing to do with religious persecution: he plundered Hindu temples of all sects including Buddhism, in his own kingdom, without bothering to desecrate them or their keepers apart from lucrative plunder. It is the one geunine case of a ruler plundering not out of religious motives but for the gold. There is no known case of a Muslim marauder who merely stole from temples without bothering to explicity desecrate them, much less of a Muslim ruler who plundered the sanctuaries of his own religion. Moreover, Kalhana's history book Rajatarangini relates this story with the comment: "Promoted by the Turks in his employ, he behaved like a Turk." This Harsha employed Turkish mercenaries (which his successors would regret, for they spied and ultimately grabbed power), and these Muslims already had a firm reputation of plundering temples with a good conscience.”

Harsha of Kashmir

Elst, Koenraad Negationism in India: concealing the record of Islam. 1992

Books , Religion , Motivation

“Islamophobic violence is nurtured by histories of anti-black racist violence.”

Angela Davis (1944) American political activist, scholar, and author

Freedom is a Constant Struggle: Closures and Continuities (2013)

“In America journalism is apt to be regarded as an extension of history: in Britain, as an extension of conversation.”

Anthony Sampson (1926–2004) British writer and journalist

Source: Anatomy of Britain Today (1965), Chapter 9.

“Do you consider, my dear maggotty sir [cosy-name for his friend], what a deal of work history pictures require to what little dirty subjects of coal horses and jackasses and such figures as I fill up with; no, you don't consider anything about that part of the story... But to be serious (as I know you love to be), do you really think that a regular composition in the Landskip [landscape] way should ever be filled with History, or any figures but such as fill a place (I won't say stop a gap) or create a little business for the eye to be drawn from the trees in order to return to them with more glee.”

Thomas Gainsborough (1727–1788) English portrait and landscape painter

Quote from Gainsborough's letter to his friend William Jackson of Exeter, from Bath 23 Aug. 1767; as cited in Thomas Gainsborough, by William T, Whitley https://ia800204.us.archive.org/6/items/thomasgainsborou00whitrich/thomasgainsborou00whitrich.pdf; New York, Charles Scribner's Sons – London, Smith, Elder & Co, Sept. 1915, p. 379 (Appendix A - Letter I)
1755 - 1769

Love , Way , Business , Thinking

“It was not so long ago that the Bible enjoyed a stranglehold similar to that of the Quran over vast populations in the West. The theocracies propped up by the Bible in Europe and America had enacted similar sagas of slaughter and pillage for several centuries. But a sustained Western scholarship showed up the Bible for what it was. “It would be more consistent,” proclaimed Thomas Pain, “that we call it [the Bible] the work of a demon than the word of God.” The spell of Jehovah was broken…. The rest is history. Christianity is now seeking a refuge in countries like India where its rout in the West remains unknown.”

Sita Ram Goel book The Calcutta Quran Petition

The Calcutta Quran Petition (1986)

God , Pain , Country

“Technology is closing the gap between what one can imagine and what one can do and as a result the equality of opportunity is unmatched in human history.”

Matt Mullenweg (1984) American entrepreneur

Steppin' off the Edge http://steppinofftheedge.com/podcast/philosophy-of-open-source/, Podcast Interview, January 2011

Imagination

Quotes about history page 35

Quotes about history
page 35