History Quotes - Page 22

History has to be rewritten because history is the selection of those threads of causes or antecedents that we are interested in.

The more bombers the less room for doves of peace.

At the end, all that's left of you are your possessions. Perhaps that's why I've never been able to throw anything away. Perhaps that's why I hoarded the world: with the hope that when I died, the sum total of my things would suggest a life larger than the one I lived.

This is a huge step toward unraveling Genesis Chapter 1, Verse 1-what happened in the beginning. This is a Genesis machine. It'll help to recreate the most glorious event in the history of the universe.

Any historical narrative is a bundle of silences.

Darkest of all Decembers ever has my life known, Sitting here by the embers, stunned, helpless, alone.

[W]e are the heirs of a past of rope, fire, and murder. I for one am not ashamed of this past. My shame is for those who became so inhuman that they could inflict this torture upon us.

The characteristic mark of economic history under capitalism is unceasing economic progress, a steady increase in the quantity of capital goods available, and a continuous trend toward an improvement in the general standard of living.

A mere collector of supposed facts is as useful as a collector of matchboxes.

One of the things I recognized early on, doing whatever studies of black history I have, is that even though black folks were transported as slaves, into servitude, when they were carried out of Africa they left empty-handed, but they didn't leave empty-headed. They carried with them the culture they knew, the culture they had, and that culture reconstituted itself in all the places they went.

Every age is fed on illusions, lest men should renounce life early and the human race come to an end.

American history is not something dead and over. It is always alive,always growing, always unfinished.

Take from the altars of the past the fire - not the ashes.

Much of human history has consisted of unequal conflicts between the haves and the have-nots.

My ideal man is Benjamin Franklin-the figure in American history most worthy of emulation ... Franklin is my ideal of a whole man. ... Where are the life-size-or even pint-size-Benjamin Franklins of today?

History knows no resting places and no plateaus

Difficulty is the excuse history never accepts.

The urgent consideration of the public safety may undoubtedly authorize the violation of every positive law. How far that or any other consideration may operate to dissolve the natural obligations of humanity and justice, is a doctrine of which I still desire to remain ignorant.

The elegance of dress, of motion, and of manners gives a lustre to beauty, and inflames the senses through the imagination. Luxurious entertainments, midnight dances, and licentious spectacles, present at once temptation and opportunity to female frailty. From such dangers the unpolished wives of the barbarians were secured by poverty, solitude, and the painful cares of a domestic life.

History is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.

Art is vice. One does not wed it, one rapes it.

A nation that forgets its past can function no better than an individual with amnesia.

Any man who does not accept the conditions of life sells his soul.

I don't have a long family history of good cooks in my family.

Anger, used, does not destroy. Hatred does.