Historical Quotes - Page 8

As the British Constitution is the most subtle organism which has proceeded from progressive history, so the American Constitution is the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man.

There is an angel within the monkey struggling to get free, and this is what the historical crisis is all about.

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.

There are, besides, eternal truths, such as Freedom, , etc., that are common to all states of society. But Communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality, instead of constituting them on a new basis; it therefore acts in contradiction to all past historical experience.

We have the power to make this the best generation of mankind in the history of the world or to make it the last.

The midwife of history is violence.

Every step we take towards making the State our Caretaker of our lives, by that much we move toward making the State our Master.

For me, the challenge of a period film is that, unlike a contemporary film where the character can be very free-form when it comes to the acting, there's a burden to acting in a period film because you have to stay within the character's historical background and the gestures of certain periods.

To me, healing means you have to recognize there is a wound and you try to understand what the sources of the wound are, which means you try to tell a story about how it came to be. So you have to engage in some historical interpretation.

Today, in American imperialism, the commodity has reached its most grandiose historical manifestation.

Purely historical thought is therefore nihilistic: it wholeheartedly accepts the evil of history and in this way is opposed to rebellion.

Democracy is indispensable to socialism.

Buddhism, I think, is probably facing the single most difficult transition from one historical epoch to another, which is really the transition to modernity.

It [the depression] was not accidental. It was a carefully contrived occurrence worked out as one works out a mathematical equation. The international bankers sought to bring about a condition of despair here so that they might emerge as the rulers of us all.

Species go extinct because there are historical contraints built into a given body or a given design.

Quite apart from any conscious program, the great cultural historians have always been historical morphologists: seekers after theforms of life, thought, custom, knowledge, art.

Some writers may toy with the fancy of a ‘Christ-myth,’ but they do not do so on the ground of historical evidence. The historicity of Christ is as axiomatic for an unbiased historian as the historicity of Julius Caesar. It is not historians who propagate the ‘Christ-myth’ theories.

There is no sociology worthy of the name which does not possess a historical character.

Intellectual neutrality is not possible in a historical world of exploitation and oppression.

I wouldn't mind spending six months a year having a private jet take me around the world to visit natural and historical landmarks like the Egyptian pyramids, Mount Kilimanjaro or the Taj Mahal.

There cannot be true democracy unless all citizens are able to participate fully in the lives of their country.

It [the scientific revolution] outshines everything since the rise of Christianity and reduces the Renaissance and Reformation to the rank of mere episodes, mere internal displacements, within the system of medieval Christendom. . . . It looms so large as the real origin of the modern world and of the modern mentality that our customary periodization of European history has become an anachronism and an encumbrance.

Forgetfulness, and I would even say historical error, are essential in the creation of a nation.

Childbearing should be a punishable crime against society, unless the parents hold a government license. All potential parents should be required to use contraceptive chemicals, the government issuing antidotes to citizens chosen for childbearing.

The financial system has been turned over to the Federal Reserve Board. That Board administers the finance system by authority of a purely profiteering group. The system is Private, conducted for the sole purpose of obtaining the greatest possible profits from the use of other people's money.