History Quotes

“It was the encounter between the printed page and the oral culture, of which he was one embodiment, that led Menocchio to formulate -first for himsel, later for himself, later for his fellow villagers, and finally for the judges- the "opinions ... (that) came out of his head.”
― Carlo Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller

“A generic man once said, "History is for the birds." Well, I'm a specific man, so I say history is for the ducks.”
― Jarod Kintz, Ducks are the stars of the karaoke bird world

“Fascism counts on people's credulity, on their craving to believe, on their fear that there is nothing to believe.”
― Rosemary Sullivan, The Betrayal of Anne Frank: A Cold Case Investigation

“And even if you don't give a shit whether or not the Chinese painter of rocks and birds had some mysterious kinship of the soul with the Landgrave of Hesse, fantasies are nonetheless one path to the truth. History is Philomela, and they raped her, or so they say, and cut her tongue, and she whistles at night from deep in the woods.”
― Éric Vuillard, The War of the Poor

“Den enes helgon har varit den andres satkärring -- på 1300-talet liksom i nutiden.”
― Dick Harrison

“History is not a science, nor is it an art, though the historian must, as a writer, be an artist too, he should write well, lucidly and eloquently, and is not harmed by a lively imagination. What is history? A truthful account of what happened in the past. As this necessarily involves evaluation, the historian is also a moralist. The term 'liberal,' mocked by some, must be retained. Historians are fallible beings who must make up their own minds, constantly aware of the particularised demands of truth. What is seen as odd must be allowed to retain its oddity, upon which later a clearer light may or may not shine. There are many dangers. History must be saved from dictators, from authoritarian politics, from psychology, from anthropology, from science, above all from the pseudo-philosophy of historicism. The study of history is menaced by fragmentation, a distribution of historical thinking among other disciplines, as we see happening in the case of philosophy. Such fragmentation opens a space for false prophets, old and new. Not only the shades of Hegel and Marx and Heidegger, but also those, you know whom I mean, who would degrade history into what they call 'fabulation.' Of course it is a truism, of which much has been made, that we cannot see the past. But we can work hard and faithfully to portray it, to understand and explain it. We need this if we are to possess wisdom and freedom. What brings down dictators, what has liberated Eastern Europe? Most of all a passionate hunger for truth, for the truth about their past, and for the justice which truth begets.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Green Knight

“As a matter of fact, the idea of death seeped into our blood. We would die, anyway, whatever happened. We would be gassed, we would be burned, we would be hanged, or we would be shot. The members of the underground at least knew that if they died, they would die fighting for something.”
― Olga Lengyel, Five Chimneys: A Woman Survivor's True Story of Auschwitz

“In the brief respite, James tore up part of the flooring and leaped down into an underground vault or drain. Unluckily for him, he had recently caused the egress from this chamber to be walled up because his tennis balls had sometimes been lost there.”
― Gordon Donaldson, Scottish Kings

“We realize that all these acts of self-reinvention and self-determination will nonetheless be trampled by the greedy and the powerful, then ground up in the tank treads of history.”
― Matt Zoller Seitz, The Wes Anderson Collection: The Grand Budapest Hotel

“Privilege is saving confederacy statues because they're 'historic' but bulldozing through ancient sacred sites & artifacts for pipelines.

(8/18/2017 on Twitter)”
― Ruth Hopkins

“People really need to ask themselves why their communities chose to erect statues to slaveholders instead of abolitionists.

(7/11/2020 on Twitter)”
― Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

“A Thought:

Can we stop showing Black and White pictures of the entire decade of the 1960s so people stop thinking it was 1000 years ago. I'm two years younger than the Civil Rights movement. And Ruby Bridges lives down the street from me and is on Instagram.

(8/1/2020 on Twitter)”
― Hannah Beachler

“It can take billions of years for light to reach us through the galaxies, which is to say, History is ever arriving. So it's most likely that the decision, seemingly all mine, was already made years ago by someone else, which is to say, language — that is to say, translation — always arises from collective consciousness.”
― Don Mee Choi, DMZ Colony

“some of these genetic ancestry tests which proport to find race in your genes but, in fact, have to presume that race already lives in your genes in order to then find it there. If you understand race to be something historically constructed, then it doesn’t live in your genes.

(4/10/2020 on Vocal Fries podcast)”
― Jonathan Rosa

“Baru felt a profound empathy for her attacker. Falcrest has cut your people, cut off lips and balls and fingers and tongues, and you cannot get justice. You cannot wait for history to turn in your favor.”
― Seth Dickinson, The Tyrant Baru Cormorant

“Through the way it values - or does not - the finite resources of our planet, double entry [accounting] now has the potential to make or break life on the earth. We can continue to ignore the free gifts of nature in the accounts of our nations and corporations, and thereby continue to ruin the planet. Or we can begin to account for nature and make it thrive again. If numbers and money are the only language spoken in the global capitalist economy, then this is the language we must use. Accountants, remodelled as eco-accountants, can plan a central role in this conversation - and it is for this reason that Jonathan Watts wrote in 2010 that they may be the one last hope for life on earth. As he also pointed out, done badly, eco-accounting will mean the natural world is further 'commodified, priced, sliced and sold to the highest bidder'. But done well, it could reframe our values and transform the capitalist world in ways we are yet to imagine.”
― Jane Gleeson-White, Double Entry: How the Merchants of Venice Shaped the Modern World

“Concerning the end of Thomas Müntzer, there exists a legend of cowardice with many variants. Müntzer supposedly fled and hid and they found him and turned him over to Count von Mansfield and he was imprisoned in a dungeon and tortured and supposedly he recanted and implored the princes for money and dictated a contrite letter to the inhabitants of Mühlhausen. I don't believe a word of it.”
― Éric Vuillard, The War of the Poor

“History is the last casualty of war.”
― D.A. Holdsworth

“In effect, we have a cafeteria-style curriculum in which the appetizers and desserts can easily be mistaken for the main courses' ... This "curricular smorgasbord," combined with extensive student choice, led to a situation in which only small proportions of high school students completed standard, intermediate, and advanced courses.”
― Diane Ravitch, The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education

“A Nation at Risk proposed that four-year colleges and universities raise their admissions requirements. It urged scholars and professional societies to help upgrade the quality of textbooks and other teaching materials. It called on states to evaluate textbooks for their quality and to request that publishers present evidence of the effectiveness of their teaching materials, based on field trials and evaluations.”
― Diane Ravitch, The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education

“If it had been written in the usual somber, leaden tones of most national commissions, we would not be discussing it a generation later. A Nation at Risk was written in plain English, with just enough flair to capture the attention of the press. Its arguments and recommendations made sense to nonspecialists. People who were not educators could understand its message, which thoughtfully addressed the fundamental issues in education. The national news media featured stories about the 'crisis in education.' The report got what it wanted: the public's attention.”
― Diane Ravitch, The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education

“What you share in such companionship always prepares you for greater things. The haze of nostalgia covers their days among their sisters, making those days into something different than they were. That's the way today changes history. All contemporaries do not inhabit the same time. The past is always changing, but few realize it.”
― Frank Herbert, God Emperor of Dune

“I told a potential girlfriend I had known for several months that I had been really sick for years and had recovered, and she freaked out! Some ladies don't want a boyfriend with a history of past disabling illness.”
― Steven Magee

“In fact, we, the LGBTQ community, have always been here. We were required to lead invisible lives out of necessity. We loved who we loved in the background of society because it was too dangerous to do otherwise.”
― Gayla Turner, Don't You Dare: Uncovering Lost Love

“Ella warned Ruby, "Let me tell you, the life lead is not an easy one. There are many dangers in the world for us - it's dangerous if other people find out because of what they might do to us. Some will want to hurt us or put us into mental institutions. Some will want to get rid of us altogether. Others will try to 'cure' us by forcing us into marriage, thinking that all we need is a 'good man.' Let me assure you, sweet lady, there is no cure for what ails us, because we are not ill.”
― Gayla Turner, Don't You Dare: Uncovering Lost Love

“What course are you on, then?" she asks. "History."
"So you want to read about people who died before you can even remember," she teases, nudging me in the arm.
I take a moment to think about what it means to me so that the words come out right.
"History is who we are," I say finally. "The past shapes us. Even the parts you can't remember”
― Ciara Smyth, The Falling in Love Montage

“History is not a determination of your future.”
― Dax Bamania

“அடித்துக்கொண்டு பறந்தன. ஆயிரம் பதினாயிரம் குயில்கள் ஒன்று சேர்ந்து இன்னிசை பாடின. மலை, மலையான வண்ண மலர்க் குவியல்கள் அவன் மீது”
― கல்கி கிருஷ்ணமூர்த்தி

“Not one line - you can't rewire history so
the connections energise other lights.”
― George Sandifer-Smith, Empty Trains

“Do we need neighborhood public schools? I believe we do ... For more than a century, they have been an essential element of our democratic institutions. We abandon them at our peril.”
― Diane Ravitch, The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education