History Quotes

He was Caesar and Pope in one; but he was Pope without Pope's pretensions, Caesar without the legions of Caesar: without a standing army, without a bodyguard, without a palace, without a fixed revenue; if ever any man had the right to say that he ruled by the right divine, it was Mohammed, for he had all the power without its instruments and without its supports. He cared not for the dressings of power. The simplicity of his private life was in keeping with his public life.

~ R. Bosworth Smith

The whole of world history often seems to me nothing more than a picture book which portrays humanity's most powerful and a senseless desire - the desire to forget. Does not each generation, by means of suppression, concealment, and ridicule, efface what the previous generation considered most important?

~ Hermann Hesse

Since history is not an objective reality, but only an imaginative reconstruction of vanished events, the pattern that appears useful and agreeable to one generation is never entirely so to the next.

~ Carl Lotus Becker

God was never created the economy.Men found it after banished from Eden.

~ Toba Beta

There are people who desperately want to change the world. I wonder if it could be measured, because the world is already in the state of continuously change since the beginning of time. Or they may just want their names etched nicely on men history.

~ Toba Beta

Once upon a time in the land of Shinar, God came down to see the city and the tower. People were united and spoke in one language. Then God confound their language and caused them scattered all over the planet earth. I believe, because of our technology, there will be one computer-based language on earth. Then God will come back again and make us all scattered all over the stars constellation.

~ Toba Beta

In history, truth should be held sacred, at whatever cost . . . especially against the narrow and futile patriotism, which, instead of pressing forward in pursuit of truth, takes pride in walking backwards to cover the slightest nakedness of our forefathers.

~ Col. Thomas Aspinwall

It is truth, in the old saying, that is 'the daughter of time,' and the lapse of half a century has not left us many of our illusions. Churchill tried and failed to preserve one empire. He failed to preserve his own empire, but succeeded in aggrandizing two much larger ones. He seems to have used crisis after crisis as an excuse to extend his own power. His petulant refusal to relinquish the leadership was the despair of postwar British Conservatives; in my opinion this refusal had to do with his yearning to accomplish something that 'history' had so far denied him—the winning of a democratic election.

~ Christopher Hitchens

Physics advances by accepting absurdities. Its history is one of unbelievable ideas proving to be true.

~ Rivka Galchen

The student of history knows no more refreshing recreation than that of nailing liars, like vermin, to the wall.

~ Frederick Rolfe

There were three things sought by invaders who crossed oceans to discover America. Those were gold, gospel, glory. There are four things sought by aliens who crossed heavens to discover planet earth. Those are gold, gospel, glory, gene.

~ Toba Beta

Selfrighteous creates wars more often than other reasons.

~ Toba Beta

When Lincoln was asked if God was on the Union’s side, Lincoln’s unvarying response was that what was really important was whether they were on God’s side.

~ Joe L. Wheeler

There are certain mortal moments and minutes that matter. Certain hingepoints in the history of each human. Some seconds are so decisive they shrink the soul, while others are spent, so as to stretch the soul.

~ Neal A. Maxwell

If there is a Creator-God, it has used methods of creation that are indistinguishable from nature, it has declined to make itself known for all of recorded history, it doesn't intervene in affairs on earth, and has made itself impossible to observe. Even if you believe in that God... why would you think it would want to be worshiped?

~ David G. Mcafee

No mi kršćani upućeni smo po središtu našega Creda - 'mučen pod Poncijem Pilatom' - u povijest u kojoj je bilo razapinjanja i mučenja, u kojoj se plakalo i tako rijetko ljubilo. I nikakav od povijesti udaljeni mit, nikakav Platonovi idejni Bog, nikakva gnostička soteriologija i nikakav apstraktni govor o povijesnosti naše egzistencije ne mogu nam vratiti onu nedužnost koju smo u toj povijesti izgubili.

~ Johann Baptist Metz

Forgiveness allows the burdens that we carry to become the histories that we forget.

~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

The soul becomes dyed with the colour of its thoughts.

~ Marcus Aurelius

Books permit us to voyage through time, to tap the wisdom of our ancestors. The library connects us with the insight and knowledge, painfully extracted from Nature, of the greatest minds that ever were, with the best teachers, drawn from the entire planet and from all our history, to instruct us without tiring, and to inspire us to make our own contribution to the collective knowledge of the human species. I think the health of our civilization, the depth of our awareness about the underpinnings of our culture and our concern for the future can all be tested by how well we support our libraries.

~ Carl Sagan

He who doesn't understand history is doomed to repeat it.

~ Pittacus Lore

The Master said, “A true teacher is one who, keeping the past alive, is also able to understand the present.”(Analects 2.11)

~ Confucius

Fiction is written with reality and reality is written with fiction. We can write fiction because there is reality and we can write reality because there is fiction; everything we consider today to be myth and legend, our ancestors believed to be history and everything in our history includes myths and legends. Before the splendid modern-day mind was formed our cultures and civilizations were conceived in the wombs of, and born of, what we identify today as fiction, unreality, myth, legend, fantasy, folklore, imaginations, fabrications and tall tales. And in our suddenly realized glory of all our modern-day advancements we somehow fail to ask ourselves the question Who designated myths and legends as unreality? But I ask myself this question because who decided that he was spectacular enough to stand up and say to our ancestors You were all stupid and disillusioned and imagining things and then why did we all decide to believe this person? There are many realities not just one. There is a truth that goes far beyond what we are told today to believe in. And we find that truth when we are brave enough to break away from what keeps everybody else feeling comfortable. Your reality is what you believe in. And nobody should be able to tell you to believe otherwise.

~ C. Joybell C.

Sometimes we have to soak ourselves in the tears and fears of the past to water our future gardens.

~ Suzy Kassem

There are three kind of history. The first is what really happened and that is forever lost. The second is what most people thought happened, and we can recover that with assiduous effort. The third is what the people in power wanted the future to think happened and that is 90 percent of the history in books.

~ Michael Gruber

...the holy men sat in an atmospherereeking of antiquity, so thick with thedust of ages that you can't see through it--nor can they.

~ Gertrude Bell

There comes a moment in history when ignorance is no longer a forgivable offense... a moment when only wisdom has the power to absolve. - Bertrand Zobrist

~ Dan Brown

Stored personal memories along with handed down collective memories of stories, legends, and history allows us to collate our interactions with a physical and social world and develop a personal code of survival. In essence, we all become self-styled sages, creating our own book of wisdom based upon our studied observations and practical knowledge gleaned from living and learning. What we quickly discover is that no textbook exist how to conduct our life, because the world has yet to produce a perfect person – an ideal observer – whom is capable of handing down a concrete exemplar of epistemic virtues. We each draw upon the guiding knowledge, theories, and advice available for us in order to explore the paradoxes, ironies, inconsistencies, and the absurdities encountered while living in a supernatural world. We mold our personal collection of information into a practical practicum how to live and die. Each day we define and redefine who we are, determine how we will react today, and chart our quest into an uncertain future.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

The telling and the hearing of a story is not a simple act. The one who tells must reach down into deeper layers of the self, reviving old feelings, reviewing the past. Whatever is retrieved is reworked into a new form, one that narrates events and gives the listener a path through these events that leads to some fragment of wisdom. The one who hears takes the story in, even to a place not visible or conscious to the mind, yet there. In this inner place a story from another life suffers a subtle change. As it enters the memory of the listener it is augmented by reflection, by other memories, and even the body hearing and responding in the moment of the telling. By such transmissions, consciousness is woven.

~ Susan Griffin

Don’t be afraid of those failures that do not lead to a loss of life or that do not incapacitate people.

~ Janvier Chouteu-Chando

Having a deep sense of understanding is a huge burden for a mind that can’t directly influence things.

~ Janvier Chouteu-Chando

Take a stand that reflects the widest horizons of your soul if you don’t want to be a slave to external powers.

~ Janvier Chouteu-Chando

What is there in this big wide world for a man to talk about with certainty besides his homeland, home and family?

~ Janvier Chouteu-Chando

The Cameroonian soul is genuine. It is noble, and it embodies humanism.

~ Janvier Chouteu-Chando

The good shall prevail in the end, the truth shall be the rule and the Cameroonian soul shall be free,” Hans said in an emotion-choked voice, “However, we should never lose our heads; we should always be prepared to forgive all the repentant souls.

~ Janvier Chouteu-Chando

True heroes don't fall. They only encounter temporary setbacks as they forge ahead towards progress.

~ Janvier Chouteu-Chando

…what else do we have to ensure our sanity except our love for something beyond ourselves―our love for our families, our love for our fatherland?

~ Janvier Chouteu-Chando

...History is the key to the unity of a people. Its nostalgia pulls them together. Its gloom separates them further. Its successes make them stronger.

~ Janvier Chouteu-Chando

Hope is soothing, but it can become deceptive if we cling to it as the last resort against reality

~ Janvier Chouteu-Chando

Only the learned read old books, and... now... they are of all men the least likely to acquire wisdom by doing so. ...[G]reat scholars are now as little nourished by the past as the most ignorant mechanic who holds that history is bunk... [for] ...when a learned man is presented with any statement in an ancient author, the one question he never asks is whether it is true. He asks who influenced the ancient writer, and how far the statement is consistent with what he said in other books, and what phase in the writer's development, or in the general history of thought, it illustrates, and how it affected later writers, and how often it has been misunderstood (specially by the learned man's colleagues) and what the general course of criticism on it has been for the last ten years, and what is the present state of the question. To regard the ancient writer as a possible source of knowledge-to anticipate that what he said could possibly modify your thoughts or your behavior-this would be rejected as unutterably simple-minded. ... [Therefore, even though] learning makes a free commerce between the ages... every generation [is cut] off from all others... [and] ...characteristic errors of one [are not] corrected by the characteristic truths of another.

~ C.s. Lewis

Once people said: Give me liberty or give me death. Now they say: Make me a slave, just pay me enough.

~ Todd Garlington