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History Quotes

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History Quotes

“The primitive history of the species is all the more fully retained in its germ-history in proportion as the series of embryonic forms traversed is longer; and it is more accurately retained the less the mode of life of the recent forms differs from that of the earlier, and the less the peculiarities of the several embryonic states must be regarded as transferred from a later to an earlier period of life, or as acquired independently.”

LifeStatesFormScienceHistoryPeriodsSeriesSpeciesProportionPrimitiveGerms
Author:Fritz Muller
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“The more I study the things of the mind the more mathematical I find them. In them as in mathematics it is a question of quantities; they must be treated with precision. I have never had more satisfaction than in proving this in the realms of art, politics and history.”

MindArtScienceHistoryStudyProveMathematicsSatisfactionTreatedMathematicalRealmsTreatmentQuantityPrecision
Book:Life and Letters of H. Taine: 1870-1892
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“If a little less time was devoted to the translation of letters by Julius Caesar describing Britain 2000 years ago and a little more time was spent on teaching children how to describe (in simple modern English) the method whereby ethylene was converted into polythene in 1933 in the ICI laboratories at Northwich, and to discussing the enormous social changes which have resulted from this discovery, then I believe that we should be training future leaders in this country to face the world of tomorrow far more effectively than we are at the present time.”

IfsWorldShouldYearsBelieveChildrenLittlesCountryFacesScienceI BelieveSocialSimpleLeaderHistoryTeachingModernTomorrowFutureTrainingResearchDiscoveryYears AgoLettersMethodEnormousBritainMore TimeDevotedSocial ChangeTranslationsLaboratoryDescribingDiscussingPresent TimeTeaching ChildrenJuliusFuture LeadersModern English
Author:Ronald Sydney Nyholm
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“When the uncultured man sees a stone in the road it tells him no story other than the fact that he sees a stone ... The scientist looking at the same stone perhaps will stop, and with a hammer break it open, when the newly exposed faces of the rock will have written upon them a history that is as real to him as the printed page.”

MenRealFactsStoriesRealityFacesScienceCultureBreakHistoryWrittenRocksPagesStonesScientistExposedHammersPrinted
Book:Nature's Miracles: Familiar Talks on Science
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“A multidisciplinary study group ... estimated that it would be 1980 before developments in artificial intelligence make it possible for machines alone to do much thinking or problem solving of military significance. That would leave, say, five years to develop man-computer symbiosis and 15 years to use it. The 15 may be 10 or 500, but those years should be intellectually the most creative and exciting in the history of mankind.”

ThinkingMenShouldYearsMayUseProblemWould BeScienceHistoryCreativeStudyFiveGroupsMankindMilitaryDevelopmentComputerIntellectualMachinesExcitingFive YearsSignificanceArtificial IntelligenceArtificialProblem SolvingSymbiosisStudy GroupMultidisciplinary
Book:In memoriam, J.C.R. Licklider, 1915-1990
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“There is romance, the genuine glinting stuff, in typewriters, and not merely in their development from clumsy giants into agile dwarfs, but in the history of their manufacture, which is filled with raids, battles, lonely pioneers, great gambles, hope, fear, despair, triumph. If some of our novels could be written by the typewriters instead of on them, how much better they would be.”

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Author:J. B. Priestley
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“The Whig interpretation of history ... is the tendency in many historians to write on the side of Protestants and Whigs, to praise revolutions provided they have been successful, to emphasise certain principles of progress in the past and to produce a story which is the ratification if not the glorification of the present.”

IfsWritingHas BeensStoriesPastScienceCertainSidesPrinciplesHistorySuccessfulProgressProduceRevolutionPraiseTendenciesInterpretationHistorianProtestantsGlorification
Book:The Whig interpretation of history
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“The Nazi Party was, in the early 1920s, but one among many nationalist and volkisch radical political groups. It was catapulted to prominence with the onset of economic recession in the late 1920s... The Nazis owed their spectacular to a combination of two discrete sets of factors: first, their distinctive organisation and strategy; and secondly, the wider socio-economic conditions which created climates of opinion and sets of grievances on which the Nazis could prey.”

FirstsTwoPoliticalPartyOpinionHistoryGroupsEconomicConditionsLateStrategyClimateFactorsRadicalCombinationNaziPreySpectacularOrganisationRecessionsDistinctiveNazismGrievanceNazi GermanyProminenceDiscreteNazi PartyPolitical GroupsEconomic Recession
Author:Mary Fulbrook
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“The repeated claim before the 'seizure of power' - that the NSDAP, as a national social-revolutionary movement, and not simply another political party... would create new bonds of unity through its elimination and transcending of the party system, was highly attractive and conveyed much of Nazism's dynamic appeal.”

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Book:THE
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“Within the Nazi Party, the beginnings of a personality cult around Hitler go back to the year before the [Munich] putsch... Outside these small groups of fanatical Bavarian Nazis, Hitler's image and reputation at this time - so far as the wider German public took any notice of him at all - was little more than that of a vulgar demagogue, capable of drumming up passionate opposition to the government among the Munich mob, but of little else.”

YearsLittlesGovernmentPartyHistoryGroupsPersonalityCapablePassionateReputationOppositionNaziCultVulgarNazismSmall GroupsNazi GermanyDrummingMunichNazi PartyImage And Reputation
Author:Ian Kershaw
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“Without the changed conditions, the product of a lost war, a revolution and a pervasive sense of national humiliation, Hitler would have remained a nobody. His main ability by far, as he came to realise during the course of 1919, was that in the prevailing circumstances he could inspire an audience which shared his basic political feelings, by the way he spoke, by the force of his rhetoric, by the very power of his prejudice, by the conviction he conveyed that there was a way out of Germany's plight.”

WayWarFeelingsPoliticalCoursesLostForceAbilityHistoryAudienceConditionsChangedInspireProductsRevolutionCircumstancesPrejudiceConvictionGermanySpokesRealisingRhetoricHumiliationNazismPrevailingNazi GermanyPlight
Author:Ian Kershaw
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“A state does not simply fall apart as a result of depression... [Weimar Germany] was not destroyed by economic depression or widespread unemployment, though these naturally contributed to the atmosphere of doom, but because the Weimar Right was resolved to abolish the parliamentary state in favour of a vaguely conceived authoritarian state.”

DoeStatesFallResultsHistoryEconomicDestroyedAtmosphereGermanyUnemploymentFavourFalling ApartDoomAbolishNazismNazi GermanyParliamentaryEconomic Depression
Author:Sebastian Haffner
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“Certainly I shall use the police, and most ruthlessly, whenever the German people are hurt. But I refuse the notion that the police are protective troops for Jewish stores. No, the police protect whoever comes into Germany legitimately, but it does not exist for the purpose of protecting Jewish money-lenders.”

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Author:Hermann Goring
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“Unless a man has talents to make something of himself, freedom is an irksome burden. Of what avail is freedom to choose if the self be ineffectual? We join a mass movement to escape individual responsibility, or, in the words of the ardent young Nazi, "to be free from freedom."”

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Book:Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer
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“In relation to the political decontamination of our public life, the government will embark upon a systematic campaign to restore the nation's moral and material health. The whole educational system, theater, film, literature, the press and broadcasting - all these will be used as a means to this end.”

MeanEndsWholeGovernmentFilmPoliticalUsedLiteratureNationsMoralHistoryMaterialsRelationTheaterPressesEducationalCampaignsPropagandaPublic LifeSystematicNazismEducational SystemNazi GermanyBroadcasting
Author:Adolf Hitler
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“It is sometimes suggested that the [Nazi economic] recovery was a product of a specific fascist economic strategy, which distinguished it from the recovery efforts of other capitalist states. While few would disagree that the Nazi regime had a number of clear ideological preferences when it came to the economy, the policies pursued in 1933 had much in common with those adopted in other countries, and with the policies of the pre-Hitler governments.”

CountrySometimesStatesGovernmentCommonNumbersEffortHistoryEconomyClearEconomicPolicyProductsStrategyRecoveryDisagreeCapitalistRegimesOther CountriesNaziPreferenceAdoptedDistinguishedPursuedIdeologicalFascistsNazismNazi GermanyEconomic Recovery
Author:Richard Overy
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