H Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with H. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“History and geology show what an eyeblink it's been since our current, comfortable culture came about. And yet that culture is using up absolutely everything at a ferocious rate.”
Source: Earth
“History, and ghost stories, function for us as a kind of mediumship. We humbly ask questions of the dead to see the deeper meaning in their stories. We seek out the facts of their stories to the absolute best of our ability, as much as historical research allows. We come to inquire, to reveal, to listen, and to share these women's often forgotten, sometimes misrepresented stories. We are glad you are here on this journey with us. And to you we say the same thing we say to the ghosts who allow us to share these stories: Thank you.”
Source: A Haunted History of Invisible Women: True Stories of America's Ghosts
“History and legend and art and romance meet and mingle to create that indefinable sorcery of Venice. It is like nothing on earth except a poet's dream.”
“History and man made each other.”
“History and memory aren't the same thing[...] History doesn't abide acts of the imagination but memories depend on it. And memories are as much what we've forgotten as what we recall. History cannot be forgotten.”
Source: Wintering
“History and memory share events; that is, they share time and space. Every moment is two moments.”
Source: Fugitive Pieces
“History and the generations to come will judge our leaders by the decisions they make in the coming weeks.”
“History and the task of the future no longer signify the struggle of class against class or the conflict between one church dogma and another, but the settlement between blood and blood, race and race, Folk and Folk. And that means: the struggle of spiritual values against each other.”
“HISTORY AND THE TRIPLET OF OPACITY
History is opaque. You see what comes out, not the script that produces events, the generator of history. There is a fundamental incompleteness in your grasp of such events, since you do not see what's inside the box, how the mechanisms work. What I call the generator of historical events is different from the events themselves, much as the minds of the gods cannot be read just by witnessing their deeds. You are very likely to be fooled about their intentions.
This disconnect is similar to the difference between the food you see on the table at the restaurant and the process you can observe in the kitchen. (The last time I brunched at a certain Chinese restaurant on Canal Street in downtown Manhattan, I saw a rat coming out of the kitchen.)
The human mind suffers from three ailments as it comes into contact with history, what I call the triplet of opacity. They are:
a. the illusion of understanding, or how everyone thinks he knows what is going on in a world that is more complicated (or random) than they realize;
b. the retrospective distortion, or how we can assess matters only after the fact, as if they were in a rearview mirror (history seems clearer and more organized in history books than in empirical reality);
and
c. the overvaluation of factual information and the handicap of authoritative and learned people, particularly when they create categories—when they "Platonify.”
“History and time shape the world around us, and the earth is ever changing, Gaia is in torment. We cannot wait until it is too late. We must unite to save it.”
Source: Love and the Third Degree 1: Zeda's Dawning
“History and war are cruel pedants. Those who know too little of the former are likely to have too much of the latter.”
“History arranged everything that had ever happened into one epic tale of humankind. It turned scattered bones back into people and broken objects into stories.”
Source: The Bookseller's Apprentice
“History as the slaughter-bench”
Source: The Philosophy of History
“History as well as life itself is complicated -- neither life nor history is an enterprise for those who seek simplicity and consistency.”
Source: Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed: Revised Edition
“History at its best is a gritty, dirty business.”
“History at its best is vicarious experience.”
“History attempts to provide society with an artificial collective memory.”
“History balances the frustration of 'how far we have to go' with the satisfaction of 'how far we have come.' It teaches us tolerance for the human shortcomings and imperfections which are not uniquely of our generation, but of all time.”
“history beats in longer periods than a man's heart”
“History begins in novel and ends in essay.”
“History being the record of human action is a richly variegated material, and it is not easy to give a true impression of the stuff by snipping off an inch or two for a pattern.”
“History belongs above all to the man...who needs models, teachers, comforters and cannot find them among his contemporaries.”
“History belongs to she who holds the pen...If we don't tell our stories, they won't be told.”
“History belongs to the intercessors”
Source: The Powers That Be: Theology for a New Millennium
“History belongs to the intercessors - those who believe and pray the future into being.”
“History belongs to the intercessors, who believe the future into being. If this is so, then intercession, far from being an escape from action, is a means of focusing for action and of creating action. By means of our intercessions we veritably cast fire upon the earth and trumpet the future into being.”
Source: The Powers That Be: Theology for a New Millennium
“History, belongs to the victor, and is never unfitting”
“History belongs to those who write it.”
Source: My Place Among Them
“History books say that kings and dukes and generals start wars. Don't believe it. We start them, you and I. Every time we turn away, keep quiet, stay out of it, behave ourselves.”
Source: Stepsister
“History books teach us that human behavior is unpredictable, strange, and enigmatic; people are magnanimous and cruel, peaceful and warlike.”
Source: Dead Toad Scrolls
“History books that contain no lies are extremely dull.”
“History breaks down into images, not into stories.”
“History buffs probably noted the reunion at a Washington party a few weeks ago of three ex-presidents: Carter, Ford and Nixon - See No Evil, Hear No Evil and Evil.”
“History by apprising them [the people] of the past will enable them to judge of the future. . . . It will qualify them as judges of the actions and designs of men: it will enable them to know ambition under every disguise it may assume; and knowing it, to defeat its views.”
Source: The Works of Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Virginia II, Correspondence 1782-1786
“History calls them a defeated people, but the Metis do not feel defeated, and that is what is important. Today, as in the old days, they play their fiddles, sing, dance, and tell their children the old stories. They work hard, as they have always done. They do not mind when they are called Metis, halfbreeds, mixed bloods, Canadians or bois-brules. They know who they are: 'Ka tip aim soot chic' -- the people who own themselves.”
Source: Riel's People: How the Metis Lived
“History calls those men the greatest who have ennobled themselves by working for the common good; experience acclaims as happiest the man who has made the greatest number of people happy.”
Source: Karl Marx, Frederick Engels: Collected Works
“History can be a weapon, and it can be used against you.”
“History can be formed from permanent monuments and records; but lives can only be written from personal knowledge, which is growing every day less, and in a short time is lost forever.”
Source: The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets: With Critical Observations on Their Works
“History can come in handy. If you were born yesterday, with no knowledge of the past, you might easily accept whatever the government tells you. But knowing a bit of history--while it would not absolutely prove the government was lying in a given instance--might make you skeptical, lead you to ask questions, make it more likely that you would find out the truth.”
“History can never be covered up.”
“History can predict nothing except that great changes in human relationships will never come about in the form in which they have been anticipated.”
“History can show you that it was one pile of bad stuff after another. It can also show you that there's been tremendous progress in knowledge, behaviour, laws, civilisation. It cannot show you that there was a meaning behind it.”
“History can tell us what happened in the past. But it cannot assert that it must happen again in the future.”
“History can't be left to fend for itself. For when it comes to history and beliefs and values, we turn our future on the lathe of the past.”
Source: Leadership Jazz - Revised Edition: The Essential Elements of a Great Leader
“History can't give attention to what's been lost, hidden, or deliberately buried; it is mostly a telling of success, not the partial failures that enabled success.”
Source: The Myths of Innovation
“History can't tell us. Each generation must define itself.”
“History cannot be reduced to a set of statistics and probabilities.”
“History causes the military problem to become the essence of the political problem.”
“History celebrates the battlefields whereon we meet our death, but scorns to speak of the plowed fields whereby we thrive. It knows the names of the king's bastards but cannot tell us the origin of wheat. This is the way of human folly.”
“History chews up sexually uncertain boys, and spits us out as recycled, generic greeting cards for lonely old men.”
Source: Grasshopper Jungle