History Quotes

Whenever I start a novel, I'm always looking for two things: a bit of science that makes me go 'what if?' and a piece of history that ends in a question mark.

Countries under foreign command quickly forget their history, their past, their tradition, their national symbols, their way of living, often their own literary language.

This is what Hollywood tends to do. It tends to disregard tradition, history and anything factual, twisting it and turning it and making it all okay regardless of what the English may think of it.

Bankers know that history is inflationary and that money is the last thing a wise man will hoard.

History, in general, only informs us of what bad government is.

History has shown us all too often the consequences of dreaming poorly or not at all.

I went to regular schools and I was home schooled a lot but I don't have any history in schools. Like, I literally don't exist. I didn't even get a birth certificate until the mid-80s. I always feel like I could be, like, 10 years younger, or maybe I'm 70!

Barack Obama is the most famous living person in the history of the world.

God has never, in the history of mankind, allowed his name to go long offended.

The point of that is, if you look at Walgreen's history, they've always been pioneers in the application of technology. They're the only drugstore chain that I know to have their own satellite.

Both the historian and the novelist view history as the struggle of a tiny minority, able and determined to make judgments, which is up against a vast and densely packed majority of the blind, who are led by their instincts and unable to think for themselves.

There is not to be found, in all history, any miracle attested by a sufficient number of men, of such unquestioned good sense, education and learning, as to secure us against all delusion in themselves.

Why should we honour those that die upon the field of battle? A man may show as reckless a courage in entering into the abyss of himself.

The Clinton paradox: How could a president so intelligent, so compassionate, so public-spirited and so conscious of his place in history act in such a stupid, selfish and self-destructive manner?

I never put out a history, I put out a dramatic history.

It is capitalist America that produced the modern independent woman. Never in history have women had more freedom of choice in regard to dress, behavior, career, and sexual orientation.

And it's a crime because the great plays of history, going all the way back to the Greeks, are part of everybody's heritage. It's just like in music, Beethoven or Mozart, that's everybody's heritage.

History has remembered the kings and warriors, because they destroyed; art has remembered the people, because they created.

It all happened so fast. The ghetto. The deportation. The sealed cattle car. The fiery altar upon which the history of our people and the future of mankind were meant to be sacrificed.

Being president is like being a jackass in a hailstorm. There's nothing to do but to stand there and take it.

On the day when man told the story of his life to man, history was born.

Never in our country's history have we witnessed a natural disaster that has impacted so many people in such a wide area. In fact, as of the writing of this column, millions of people along the Gulf Coast have been displaced from their homes in a period of only five days.

History is a race between education and catastrophe.

The common people have no history: persecuted by the present, they cannot think of preserving the memory of the past.

I have to bring to your notice a terrifying reality: with the development of nuclear weapons Man has acquired, for the first time in history, the technical means to destroy the whole of civilization in a single act.

I'm not sure history has ended.

The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew.

Science cannot tell theology how to construct a doctrine of creation, but you can't construct a doctrine of creation without taking account of the age of the universe and the evolutionary character of cosmic history.

My early education was in the public school system of Omaha, where, retrospectively, I realize that my high school training served me in good stead for the basic subjects of mathematics, English, foreign languages and history.

But when you are embodied in a location, in a physical plant, in a set of people, and in a common history, that constrains your evolution and your ability to evolve in certain directions.