Quotes by Historians - Page 39

That natural disasters are required to provide Americans with a glimpse of reality in their own country is an indication of the deep rot infecting the official political culture.
Tariq Ali
Disenchantment is the blessing of becoming yourself.
Rebecca Solnit
[Justice George Sutherland said, in the majority opinion for the Carter Coal case] 'One who does a thing in order to avoid a monetary penalty does not agree; he yields to compulsion precisely the same as though he did so to avoid a term in jail.
Jim Powell
The moonlight covered the tombstones with an ethereal glow, and the statues above the tombs stood like silent guards waiting for something to happen.
Alan Kinross
The strategic center of the rebellion was not a place – not New York, Philadelphia, not the Hudson corridor – but the Continental Army itself.
Joseph J. Ellis
Do not open your minds to the filtering of the fallacious doctrine that it is less infamous to murder men for their politics than for their religion or their money, or that the courage to execute the deed is worse than the cowardice to excuse it. Let us not flinch from condemning without respite or remission, not only Marat and Carrier, but also Barnave. Because there may be hanging matter in the lives of illustrious men, of William the Silent and Farnese, of Cromwell and Napoleon, we are not to be turned from justice towards the actions, and still more the thoughts, of those whom we are about to study.
John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
The function of the university is not simply to teach breadwinning, or to furnish teachers for the public schools, or to be a centre of polite society; it is, above all, to be the organ of that fine adjustment between real life and the growing knowledge of life, an adjustment which forms the secret of civilization.
W.E.B. Du Bois
A good horse should be seldom spurred.
Thomas Fuller
The day of democracy is past," he said. "Past for ever. That day began with the bowmen of Crecy, it ended when marching infantry, when common men in masses ceased to win the battles of the world, when costly cannon, great ironclads, and strategic railways became the means of power. To-day is the day of wealth. Wealth now is power as it never was power before—it commands earth and sea and sky. All power is for those who can handle wealth....
H.G.Wells
With humanity, life has ended up with a living creature that never quite finds itself in the right place, a living creature destined to wander and endlessly make mistakes.
Michel Foucault
Now, we see what we are shown. We have gotten used to being shown no matter what, within or beyond the limited range of human sight. This habituation to the monopoly of visualization-on-command strongly suggests that only those things that can in some way be visualized, recorded, and replayed at will are part of reality...The result is a strange mistrusts of our own eyes, a disposition to take as real only that which is mechanically displayed in a photograph, a statistical curve, or a table. Eyewitness testimony must be "substantiated" by records that have been acquired, and can be stored and then shown.
Barbara Duden
Good and evil lie close together. Seek no artistic unity in character.
Lord Acton
You might find it alarming to think that your doctor will not actually need to see you in person but might make a diagnosis based on the position of the stars, the colour and smell of your urine, and the taste of your blood.
Ian Mortimer
In these circumstances they did what most of us do, and, being ignorant of the truth, persuaded themselves into believing what they wished to believe.
Arrian
The whole tendency of modern life is towards scientific planning and organisation, central control, standardisation, and specialisation. If this tendency was left to work itself out to its extreme conclusion, one might expect to see the state transformed into an immense social machine, all the individual components of which are strictly limited to the performance of a definite and specialised function, where there could be no freedom because the machine could only work smoothly as long as every wheel and cog performed its task with unvarying regularity. Now the nearer modern society comes to the state of total organisation, the more difficult it is to find any place for spiritual freedom and personal responsibility. Education itself becomes an essential part of the machine, for the mind has to be as completely measured and controlled by the techniques of the scientific expert as the task which it is being trained to perform.
Christopher Henry Dawson
One with God is always a majority. But many have been burned at the stake while the boats were being counted. Thomas Reed
H.W. Brands
The War,' said a soldier proverb, 'will last a hundred years--five years of fighting and ninety-give of winding up the barbed wire.
Preston William Slosson
Not so many moons ago, he had been able to run to the summit of the temple without losing a single breath; however, now he felt like an old camel that laboured under a load of corn. Years pass so quickly, and the dreams of youth are lost forever.
Alan Kinross
It is a human characteristic, which has been richly exploited in every era, that while hope of survival is still alive in a man, while he still believes his troubles will have a favorable outcome, and while he still has the chance to unmask treason or to save someone else by sacrificing himself, he continues to cling to the pitiful remnants of comfort and remains silent and submissive. When he has been taken and destroyed, when he has nothing more to lose, and is, in consequence, ready and eager for heroic action, his belated rage can only spend itself against the stone walls of solitary confinement. Or the breath of the death sentence makes him indifferent to earthly affairs.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
If you could forget mortality... You could really believe that time is circular, and not linear and progressive as our culture is bent on proving. Seen in geological perspective, we are fossils in the making, to be buried and eventually exposed again for the puzzlement of creatures of later eras.
Wallace Stegner
Odd, some might think. Why someone would need to travel so far to find oneself. Surely a look in the mirror would suffice, and wouldn’t that be cheaper too? But the mirror lies, and the eyes that do the looking conspire too.
Farish A. Noor
So the conservative who resists change is as valuable as the radical who proposes it -- perhaps as much more as the roots are more vital than grafts. It is good that new ideas should be heard, for the sake of the few that can be used; but it is also good that new ideas should be compelled to go through the mill of objection, opposition, and contumely; this is the trial heat which innovations must survive before being allowed to enter the human race. It is good that the old should resist the young, and that the young should prod the old; out of this tension, as out of the strife of the sexes and the classes, comes a creative tensile strength, a stimulated development, a secret and basic unity and movement of the whole.
Will Durant
Inventions are smarter than their inventors
Larrie D. Ferreiro
Salt is added to dried rose petals with the perfume and spices, when we store them away in covered jars, the summers of our past.
Wallace Stegner
The Indian Summer of life should be a little sunny and a little sad like the season and infinite in wealth and depth of tone - but never hustled.
Henry Adams
Much of human history has consisted of unequal conflicts between the haves and the have-nots.
Jared Diamond
A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature; and because firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the case against a miracle is—just because it is a miracle—as complete as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined to be. Why is it more than merely probable that all men must die, that lead cannot when not supported remain suspended in the air, that fire consumes wood and is extinguished by water, unless it is that these events are found agreeable to the laws of nature, and for things to go differently there would have to be a violation of those laws, or in other words a miracle? Nothing is counted as amiracle if it ever happens in the common course of nature. When a man who seems to be in good health suddenly dies, this isn't a miracle; because such a kind of death, though more unusual than any other, has yet often been observedto happen. But a dead man’s coming to life would be a miracle, because that has never been observed in any age or country. So there must be a uniform experience against every miraculous event, because otherwise the event wouldn't count as a ‘miracle’. And as a uniform experience amounts to a proof, we have here a direct and full proof against the existence of any miracle, just because it’s a miracle; andsuch a proof can’t be destroyed or the miracle made credible except by an opposite proof that is even stronger.This clearly leads us to a general maxim that deserves ofour attention:No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle unless it is of such a kind that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact that it tries to establish. And even in that case there is a mutual destruction ofarguments, and the stronger one only gives us an assurance suitable to the force that remains to it after the force needed to cancel the other has beensubtracted.
David Hume
Once information slipped the bonds of gravity and friction, it tended to gather where it was most valuable.
H.W. Brands
It would be difficult to define the limits of his reading.
Blanche E.C. Dugdale
Do today's duty fight today's temptation do not weaken and distract yourself by looking forward to things you cannot see and could not understand if you saw them.
Charles Kingsley
Better a little fire to warm us than a great one to burn us.
Thomas Fuller
The real social contract, (Edmund Burke) argued, was not Rousseau's social contract between the noble savage and the General Will, but a "partnership" between the present generation and future generations.
Niall Ferguson
The Mob essentially created the term 'stand-up comic'—according to eighty-six-year-old comedian Dick Curtis: 'The Outfit used to manage fighters. A stand-up fighter is a guy that is a puncher. A stand-up guy was a guy who was tough and you could depend on. The Outfit managed fighters and they managed clubs that booked comics, so the term found its way into the lexicon of nightclubs. A guy who just stood there and punched jokes—joke, joke, joke—he was a stand-up comic.
Kliph Nesteroff
If there is one central intellectual reality at the end of the twentieth century, it is that the biological approach to psychiatry--treating mental illness as a genetically influenced disorder of brain chemistry--has been a smashing success. Freud's ideas, which dominated the history of psychiatry for the past half century, are now vanishing like the last snows of winter.
Edward Shorter
Thou shalt not be a victim, thou shalt not be a perpetrator, but, above all, thou shalt not be a bystander.
Yehuda Bauer
Income inequality has no necessary connection with poverty, the lack of material resources for a decent life, such as adequate food, shelter, and clothing. A society with great income inequality may have no poor people, and a society with no income inequality may have nothing but poor people.
Robert Higgs
Plainly, she is quite besotted by him,... a girl, a young girl, and she is falling in love for the first time in her life. ...little Kitty Howard at a loss, stumbling in her speech, blushing like a rose, thinking of someone else and not herself is to see a girl become a woman.
Philippa Gregory
No man is educated for statesmanship who cannot see his time from the perspective of the past.
Will Durant
I wil not heat treason from my own daughterWhat will you do behead me for treason? We are not an amry at warWe are an army at war! This is your brother's rightful throne that we are talking about
Philippa Gregory
I used to go to church. I even went through a rather intense religious period when I was sixteen. But the idea of an everlasting life -- a never-ending banquet, as a stupid visiting minister to our church once appallingly described it -- filled me with a greater terror than the concept of extinction...
Louis Auchincloss
Understanding proximate cause is also like understanding your mother: It can take years and then, just when you think you have her figured out, she surprises you.
Peter F. Lake
Every noble work is at first impossible.
Thomas Carlyle
It is indeed the duty of historians to stress the contrast betweenthe standards of the past and the standards of the present. Somefulfil that duty on purpose, others by accident.
Norman Davies
Charity begins at home but should not end there.
Thomas Fuller
In time of war, under the banner of an enemy recognisable as such, a foreigner from a camp outside the lines, the imperial idea grew strong in confidence and temper. The British democracy rallied to the call of a strong leadership, and it was not just in rhetorical enthusiasm but with considerable personal satisfaction that Churchill hailed the year 1940-1 as the British people's 'finest hour'. He, with other imperialists, was delighted by the fact that, when it came to the sticking-place, it was the old-fashioned loyalty of the reactionary British Empire to all that was symbolised by allegiance to Crown and country that came forward to save European civilisation from utter overthrow by German tyranny...The days of showing the flag—even for only a momentary glimpse, such as wall that inhabitants of Greece and Crete and Dieppe had of it—had returned. The Empire was the Empire once more, and to 10, Downing Street returned that imperial control that two generations of Dominion opinion had combined to condemn as sinister.
A.P. Thornton
Some years back Richard Nixon warned the American peoplethat Russia was bad because she had not kept any treaty oragreement signed with her. You can trust the Communists, thesaying went, to be Communists.Indian people laugh themselves sick when they hear thesestatements. America has yet to keep one Indian treaty or agreementdespite the fact that the United States government signedover four hundred such treaties and agreements with Indiantribes. It would take Russia another century to make and breakas many treaties as the United States has already violated.
Vine Deloria Jr.
The message is clear: a good mother breast feeds. Significantly, this good mother shares a sociocultural profile with women in other developed countries: she is over thirty, is a high earning professional, does not smoke, takes prenatal classes, and benefits from a long maternity leave.
Élisabeth Badinter
Her first really great role, the one that cemented the “Jean Arthur character,” was as the wisecracking big-city reporter who eventually melts for country rube Gary Cooper in Frank Capra’s Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936). It was the first of three terrific films for Capra: Jean played the down-to-earth daughter of an annoyingly wacky family in Capra’s rendition of Kaufman and Hart’s You Can’t Take It With You (1938), and she was another hard-boiled city gal won over by a starry-eyed yokel in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939). “Jean Arthur is my favorite actress,” said Capra, who had successfully worked with Stanwyck, Colbert and Hepburn. “. . . push that neurotic girl . . . in front of the camera . . . and that whining mop would magically blossom into a warm, lovely, poised and confident actress.” Capra obviously recognized that Jean was often frustrated in her career choice.
Eve Golden
Civil Wars happen when the victimized are armed. Genocide happens when they are not.
A.E. Samaan
Very few things happen at the right time and the rest do not happen at all the conscientious historian will correct these defects.
Herodotus
And even when success comes, as I am sure it will, bear in mind that there are more quiet and enviable joys than to be among the most sought after women at a ball...
Blanche Wiesen Cook
Goodbye, Room." I wave up at Skylight. "Say goodbye," I tell Ma. "Goodbye, Room."Ma says it but on mute.I look back one more time. It's like a crater, a hole where something happened. Then we go out the door.
Emma Donoghue
Conversation enriches the understanding but solitude is the school of genius.
Edward Gibbon
Our religion was the religion of a Book. Man must be educated on Earth for Heaven. John Quincy Adams
Paul C. Nagel
Macaulay is well for awhile but one wouldn't live under Niagara.
Thomas Carlyle
What a day may bring a day may take away.
Thomas Fuller
I opened the curtain and entered the confessional, a dark wooden booth built into the side wall of the church. As I knelt on the small worn bench, I could hear a boy's halting confession through the wall, his prescribed penance inaudible as the panel slid open on my side and the priest directed his attention to me."Yes, my child," he inquired softly. "Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. This is my First Confession." "Yes, my child, and what sins have you committed?" ...."I talked in church twenty times, I disobeyed my mother five times, I wished harm to others several times, I told a fib three times, I talked back to my teacher twice." I held my breath. "And to whom did you wish harm?" My scheme had failed. He had picked out the one group of sins that most troubled me. Speaking as softly as I could, I made my admission. "I wished harm to Allie Reynolds." "The Yankee pitcher?" he asked, surprise and concern in his voice. "And how did you wish to harm him?" "I wanted him to break his arm." "And how often did you make this wish?" "Every night," I admitted, "before going to bed, in my prayers." "And were there others?" "Oh, yes," I admitted. "I wished that Robin Roberts of the Phillies would fall down the steps of his stoop, and that Richie Ashburn would break his hand." "Is there anything else?" "Yes, I wished that Enos Slaughter of the Cards would break his ankle, that Phil Rizzuto of the Yanks would fracture a rib, and that Alvin Dark of the Giants would hurt his knee." But, I hastened to add, "I wished that all these injuries would go away once the baseball season ended." ..."Are there any other sins, my child?" "No, Father." "For your penance, say two Hail Mary's, three Our Fathers, and," he added with a chuckle, "say a special prayer for the Dodgers. ...
Doris Kearns Goodwin
The author says that though the Mexican War wound down, the interpretation of it was just beginning.
Harold Holzer
All sports for all people.
Pierre de Coubertin
It's the way some med say, "I'm not the problem" or that they shifted the conversation from actual corpses and victims as well as perpetrators to protecting the comfort level of bystander males. An exasperated woman remarked to me, "What do they want--a cookie for not hitting, raping, or threatening women?
Rebecca Solnit