Quotes about History

These are the times for which we were born.

At the heart of world time is the momentum of history. At the heart of personal time is the mystery and wonder of individuality. At the heart of deep, new time is the creative spirit. But at the heart of our time is love.

The face of the angel of history is turned toward the past.  Where we perceived a chain of events, he sees a single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet.  The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed.  But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them.  This storm irresistably propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward.  The storm is what we call progress.

One little person, giving all of her time to peace, makes news. Many people, giving some of their time, can make history

What would it mean if there were a theory that explained everything? And just what does "everything" actually mean, anyway? Would this new theory in physics explain, say the meaning of human poetry? Or how economics work? Or the stages of psychosexual development? Can this new physics explain the currents of ecosystems, or the dynamics of history, or why human wars are so terribly common?

"Young Alexander conquered India.
He alone?
Caesar beat the Gauls. Was there not even a cook in his army?
Philip of Spain wept as his fleet was sunk and destroyed. Were there no other tears?
Frederick the Great triumphed in the Seven Years War. Who
Triumphed with him?"

We're not going to waste our valuable space or your precious energy by giving equal time to stories of tragedy, failure, and tumult.  They get far more that their fair share of attention everywhere else.  Future historians might even conclude that our age suffered from a collective obsessive-compulsive disorder: the pathological need to repetitively seek out reasons for how bad life is.

Naturally, every age thinks that all ages before it were prejudiced, and today we think this more than ever and are just as wrong as all previous ages that thought so. How often have we not seen the truth condemned! It is sad but unfortunately true that man learns nothing from history.

Most of the history is a divine work of fiction.

The history of science is the saga of nature defying common sense.

History is written by those who survive their past.

"Playing" the resources of characterology for the sake of clarification and insight into the structures of actual existence is many times more daunting than playing a piano; it requires the thinking of chords of thoughts, not just isolated simplisms or abstracta; it demands the shaping or encompassing of morphological modes of intelligence that can comprehend gestalten, syndromes, historical and civilizational patterns in which it is not the particulars but their interactive significance (as an ensemble of actualities or principles) that is vital.

What do you suppose has changed in twenty-five years or so? I found the journal to be well written back then when someone or other left it behind. I thought it set things out rather nicely, addressing the events of the day, which are, of course, the same events of this day. Think of it. Even if its theater and its motives are being played out in a different geography, there's still war, isn't there? Still avidity and hate and violence and fear. Poverty and righteousness are still thriving. As are revolution and arrogance and lies. There is always perversion and torment, of course. What I particularly admired about this paper was the shrewd touch of pathos and poignancy strewn among the squalor and the filth. You know, The Good News... 

Should nostalgia move me, I can view the nightly news broadcasts from Rome or Milan. As I might an old movie. But unlike when I watch an old movie, the news broadcasts leave me empty, angry, and I must tell myself yet again that one need tune in only once in a lifetime to the nightly news to know the chronic story of man. To know how wrong the world is. How wronged it is.

The first revolution of the Western Hemisphere was that of the slaves of Saint Domingue (present-day Haiti) at the end of the eighteenth century, followed more than a century later by the Mexican revolution of the decade of 1910, and fifty years after that by the Cuban revolution. And if I do not cite here either the famous "American revolution" or that of the Spanish colonies that soon followed, it is because those only transferred the power of decision from the metropolis to the colonists so that they could go on doing the same thing, pursue the same project with even greater brutality, but without having to share the profits with the "mother country."

Whether because of our ignorance or pride, we've turned a collective deaf ear to the whispers of wisdom from the past. - Chap Clark and Kara E. Powell

Yesterday is history.
Tomorrow is a mystery.
Today is a gift

"The thing people forget when they are looking for solutions is there is nothing final in history."

Since winners write the history, the false propaganda used from the beginning to the end is often accepted as the true history of the war.

Christ, the historical Christ, was not crucified.... He had no intention of dying in that manner; but others felt that to fulfill the prophecies in all ways, a crucifiction was a necessity. Christ did not take part in it. There was a conspiracy in which Judas played a role, an attempt to make a martyr out of Christ. The man chosen was drugged and told he was the Christ - hence the necessity of helping him carry the cross (see Luke 23). He was one of those deluded who believed that he, not the historical Christ , was to fulfill the prophecies. ...Out of compassion Mary was present. The group responsible wanted it to appear that one particular portion of Jews had crucified Christ, and never dreamed that the whole Jewish people ould be "blamed."

History is philosophy learned from examples.

Live out of your imagination, not your history.

There is no nobler profession, nor no greater calling, than to be among those unheralded many who gave and give their lives to the preservation of human knowledge, passed with commitment and care from one generation to the next.

History remembers only the celebrated, genealogy remembers them all.

Even as regards Earth we are more committed to history than to geography, more committed to time than to space. History is endless. Place is limited.

The success or failure of any historical age is the extent to which those living at that time have fulfilled the special role that history has imposed upon them.

"An ounce of history is worth a pound of logic."

A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history.

The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments.

If a glimpse of the future is possible, it must come from an intimacy with the present clarified by the great works of the past. 

"You have delivered up our holy German Fatherland to one of the greatest demagogues of all time.  I solemnly prophesy that this accursed man will cast our Reich into the abyss and bring our nation to inconceivable misery.  Future generations will damn you in your grave for what you have done."