History Quotes - Page 43

The frequent repetition of miracles serves to provoke, where it does not subdue, the reason of mankind.

The philosopher, who with calm suspicion examines the dreams and omens, the miracles and prodigies, of profane or even of ecclesiastical history, will probably conclude that, if the eyes of the spectators have sometimes been deceived by fraud, the understanding of the readers has much more frequently been insulted by fiction.

Active valour may often be the present of nature; but such patient diligence can be the fruit only of habit and discipline.

The possession and the enjoyment of property are the pledges which bind a civilised people to an improved country.

No harm's done to history by making it something someone would want to read.

The Dutch must be understood as they really are, the Middle Persons in Trade, the Factors and Brokers of Europe... they buy to sell again, take in to send out again, and the greatest Part of their vast Commerce consists in being supply'd from All Parts of the World, that they may supply All th World Again.

It's a very good historical book about history.

Let us remember that the times which future generations delight to recall are not those of ease and prosperity, but those of adversity bravely borne.

... the history of the race, from infancy through its stages of barbarism, heathenism, civilization, and Christianity, is a process of suffering, as the lower principles of humanity are gradually subjected to the higher.

History is an indispensable even though not the highest form of intellectual endeavor.

historical research of the truly scholastic kind is not connected with human beings at all. It is a pure study, like higher mathematics.

The 1st Amendment protects the right to speak, not the right to spend.

Shiloh had as many casualties as Waterloo, and yet there were another 20 Waterloos to come.

A man without a bias cannot write interesting history - if indeed such a man exists.

Many scholars have complained of our tendency to see history only in conflicts, but I am not convinced they are right. It is in conflict that our values are exposed.

Assassination has never changed the history of the world.

Happy the people whose annals are tiresome.

The Middle Ages were an era of mysticism, ruled by blind faith and blind obedience to the dogma that faith is superior to reason. The Renaissance was specifically the rebirth of reason, the liberation of man's mind, the triumph of rationality over mysticism - a faltering, incomplete, but impassioned triumph that led to the birth of science, of individualism, of freedom.

History is a pageant and not a philosophy.

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.

History is either a moral argument with lessons for the here-and-now, or it is merely an accumulation of pointless facts.

Be careful -- with quotations, you can damn anything.

History books that contain no lies are extremely dull.

Those who weep for the happy periods which they encounter in history acknowledge what they want; not the alleviation but the silencing of misery.

A land without ruins is a land without memories - a land without memories is a land without history.