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History Quotes

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History Quotes

“All normal human beings are interested in their past. Only when the interest becomes an obsession, overshadowing present and future conduct, is it a danger. In much the same way healthy nations are interested in their history, but a morbid preoccupation with past glories is a sign that something is wrong with the constitution of the State.”

WayHumansStatesPastNationsInterestHuman BeingsHistoryDangerHealthyNormalGloryConstitutionObsessionPreoccupationMorbidOvershadowing
Author:C. V. Wedgwood
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“The selective winnowing of time leaves only a few recognizable individuals behind for the historian to light on. Thus the historian who finds the human being more interesting than what the human being has done must inevitably endow the comparatively few individuals he can identify with too great an importance in relation to their time. Even so, I prefer this overestimate to the opposite method which treats developments as though they were the massive anonymous waves of an unhuman sea or pulverizes the fallible surviving records of human life into the grey dust of statistics.”

HumansDoneLightIndividualHuman BeingsInterestingBehindsHistoryRecordsSeaDevelopmentOppositesTreatsImportanceRelationMethodWaveDustHuman LifeStatisticsMassiveHistorianGreySurvivingSelectiveOverestimate
Author:C. V. Wedgwood
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“Despite the modern dogma to the effect that women were a subject sex until the nineteenth century 'emancipated' them from history, women in history had demonstrated strong wills and purposes, had made assertions, and had directed or influenced all human destiny, including their own, since human life began.”

HumansMadePurposeStrongSexWomenDestinyHistoryModernSubjectsEffectsCenturyIncludingDespiteHuman LifeDogmaAssertionNineteenth CenturyStrong WillWomen In History
Author:Mary Ritter Beard
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“History is a great painter, with the world for canvas, and life for a figure. It exhibits man in his pride, and nature in her magnificence,--Jerusalem bleeding under the Roman, or Lisbon vanishing in flame and earthquake. History must be splendid. Bacon called it the pomp of business. Its march is in high places, and along the pinnacles and points of great affairs.”

MenWorldHistoryFiguresPrideAffairPainterFlamesMarchCanvasSplendidEarthquakesBleedingExhibitsJerusalemMagnificenceVanishingPinnacleHigh Places
Author:Robert Aris Willmott
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“History presents the pleasantest features of poetry and fiction,--the majesty of the epic, the moving accidents of the drama, the surprises and moral of the romance. Wallace is a ruder Hector; Robinson Crusoe is not stranger that Croesus; the Knights of Ashby never burnish the page of Scott with richer lights of lance and armor than the Carthaginians, winding down the Alps, cast upon Livy.”

LightRomanceMovingFictionMoralHistoryDramaPagesSurpriseCastsStrangerAccidentsFeaturesEpicMajestyKnightsArmorAlpsHectorRobinson CrusoeWinding Down
Book:Pleasures of Literature
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“A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be.”

PlaySportsHistoryPlayerAthleteMotivational SportsHockeyInspirational SportsAthleticNhlMotivational Inspirational SportsIce HockeyPuckGreat SportsBest SportsGreatest SportsAwesome SportsGreat AthleteGreat Inspirational SportsFunny SportsGreat Motivational SportsHockey PlayerAthletic MotivationalAthletic InspirationalPlaying SportsPopular SportsFunny Inspirational SportsGreat HockeySports CompetitionFunny HockeyGreat AthleticGood SportsPlaying HockeyMotivational HockeyGreatest HockeyHockey FanAthletic CompetitionInspirational HockeyHockey SticksGood Hockey
Author:Wayne Gretzky
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“Although it is tempting to imagine an ancient era innocent of biochemical weaponry, in fact this Pandora's box of horrors was opened thousands of years ago. The history of making war with biological weapons begins in mythology, in ancient oral traditions that preserved records of actual events and ideas of the era before the invention of written histories.”

YearsIdeasWarFactsHistoryRecordsImagineWrittenEventsHorrorWeaponsYears AgoTraditionAncientBoxesMythologyInventionInnocentErasTemptingWeaponryPandoraBiological WeaponsOral TraditionPandora's BoxWritten History
Author:Adrienne Mayor
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“war with poison and chemicals was not so rare in the ancient world ... An astounding panoply of toxic substances, venomous creatures, poison plants, animals and insects, deleterious environments, virulent pathogens, infectious agents, noxious gases, and combustible chemicals were marshalled to defeat foes - and panoply is an apt term here, because it is the ancient Greek word for 'all weapons.”

WorldWarTermAnimalHistoryEnvironmentCreaturesWeaponsPlantDefeatAncientAgentsSubstanceGreekPoisonChemicalsToxicInsectsFoeAncient GreekAncient WorldVenomousPathogens
Book:Greek Fire, Poison Arrows, and Scorpion Bombs: Biological and Chemical Warfare in the Ancient World
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“I learned a history not then written in books but one passed from generation to generation on the steps of moonlit porches and beside dying fires in one-room houses, a history of great-grandparents and of slavery and of the days following slavery; of those who lived still not free, yet who would not let their spirits be enslaved.”

StillsBookSpiritHouseRoomsStepsHistoryFireWrittenGenerationsDyingSlaveryFollowingGrandparentPorchGreat Grandparents
Book:Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry (Puffin Modern Classics)
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“The Declaration of Independence is the all-time masterpiece of ideological simplification. There in a single sentence of self-evident truth, the founding Fathers put into clear, easily understandable focus, the broad basis of man's relationship to God, to government, and to his fellow man.”

MenSelfGovernmentFatherHistoryClearFocusBasesFellowsIndependenceSentencesAll TimeBroadsEvidentDeclarationMasterpieceFoundingFellow ManIdeologicalDeclaration Of IndependenceSimplificationSingle Sentence
Author:Clarence Manion
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“It is undeniable that others and the larger world, so beleaguered at this moment in history, need everything that we have to give. But what to give is the problem. It seems finally clear that we cannot find out what to do simply by thinking about it. We need to gain our inspiration and our direction from much deeper sources.”

ThinkingWorldNeedsGivingMomentsProblemInspirationSeemsHistoryClearSourceGainsDeeper
Book:Touching Enlightenment: Finding Realization in the Body
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“In the United States those bits of our history that remain are paved over, sanitized, packaged for easy consumption. At those sites not already lost to commercial development, we walk between velvet ropes, herded by guides, warned not to touch. Our icons are preserved under glass, their magic demystified in glossy brochures.”

StatesLostEasyBitsWalksUnitedHistoryUnited StatesMagicDevelopmentGlassesGuidesConsumptionSiteRopeIconsVelvetBrochures
Author:Biloine W. Young
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“Sport is a seductive metaphor (life as a game in which we gain victory through hard work, discipline, and visualizing success). but the older metaphor of farming (life as hard labor that is subject to weather and quirks of blind fate and may return no reward whatsoever and don't be surprised) is still in our blood.”

MayStillsHardGamesSportsHistoryFateBloodSubjectsHard WorkReturnVictoryDisciplineGainsLaborBlindRewardsMetaphorWeatherFarmingSeductiveQuirksVisualizing
Author:Garrison Keillor
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“Shakespeare, who never could think up a plot by himself, found this one [Macbeth] in Holinshed's Chronicles, changing it just enough so that no one would recognize the source. He didn't count on the resourcefulness of modern scholars, who have to discover things like this to become associate professors.”

ThinkingEnoughFoundHistoryModernSourcePlotProfessorsScholarAssociatesChroniclesResourcefulness
Book:Twisted Tales from Shakespeare, in which Shakespeare's Best-known Plays are Presented in a New Light: The Old Light Having Blown a Fuse; Together with Introductions, Questions, Appendices, and Other Critical Apparatus Intended to Contribute to a Clearer Misunderstanding of the Subject
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