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History Quotes

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History Quotes

“Of the various forms of government which have prevailed in the world, an hereditary monarchy seems to present the fairest scope for ridicule.”

World Seems Government Form History Various Ridicule Scope Monarchy Forms Of Government Roman Empire Monarchs Hereditary Constitutional Monarchy British Monarchy

Book:The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Source: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

“Nature in no case cometh short of art, for the arts are copiers of natural forms.”

Art Philosophy Form Natural History Cases Natural Forms Copiers

Author:Marcus Aurelius

“Launch your boat, blessed youth, and flee at full speed from every form of culture.”

Art Philosophy Form Culture History Youth Blessed Speed Boat

Author:Epicurus

“To resume, in a few words, the system of the Imperial government, as it was instituted by Augustus, and maintained by those princes who understood their own interest and that of the people, it may be defined an absolute monarchy disguised by the forms of a commonwealth. The masters of the Roman world surrounded their throne with darkness, concealed their irresistible strength, and humbly professed themselves the accountable ministers of the senate, whose supreme decrees they dictated and obeyed.”

Source: THE HISTORY OF THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE (All 6 Volumes): From the Height of the Roman Empire, the Age of Trajan and the Antonines - to the Fall of Byzantium; Including a Review of the Crusades, and the State of Rome during the Middle Ages

“The manly pride of the Romans, content with substantial power, had left to the vanity of the East the forms and ceremonies of ostentatious greatness. But when they lost even the semblance of those virtues which were derived from their ancient freedom, the simplicity of Roman manners was insensibly corrupted by the stately affectation of the courts of Asia.”

Form Lost Left History Virtue Greatness Pride Court Simplicity Ancient East Vanity Manners Asia Ceremony Manly Roman Empire Semblance Ostentatious

Book:History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Source: History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

“During the games of the Circus, he had, imprudently or designedly, performed the manumission of a slave in the presence of the consul. The moment he was reminded that he had trespassed on the jurisdiction of another magistrate, he condemned himself to pay a fine of ten pounds of gold, and embraced this public occasion of declaring to the world that he was subject, like the rest of his fellow-citizens, to the laws, and even to the forms, of the republic.”

Source: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: Edited in Seven Volumes with Introduction, Notes, Appendices, and Index

“The love of spectacles was the taste, or rather passion, of the Syrians: the most skilful artists were procured form the adjacent cities; a considerable share of the revenue was devoted to the public amusements; and the magnificence of the games of the theatre and circus was considered as the happiness, and as the glory, of Antioch.”

Form Artist Passion Games Cities History Share Taste Glory Theatre Devoted Revenue Amusement Circus Roman Empire Magnificence Spectacles Antioch

Book:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Source: Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

“If man is reduced to being nothing but a character in history, he has no other choice but to subside into the sound and fury of acompletely irrational history or to endow history with the form of human reason.”

Ifs Men Humans Reason Character Form Choices Sound History Irrational Fury Human Reason

Book:The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt

Source: The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt

“A strange effect of marriage, such as the nineteenth century has made it! The boredom of married life inevitably destroys love, when love has preceded marriage. And yet, as a philosopher has observed, it speedily brings about, among people who are rich enough not to have to work, an intense boredom with all quiet forms of enjoyment. And it is only dried up hearts, among women, that it does not predispose to love.”

Source: The Red and the Black: World Classics

“He who wishes to maintain that the past of mankind no longer has any absolute value in lifemust also be ready to deny his ownlife until the present moment, indeed in advance until the last moment, as worthless. He who realizes that culture is the giving of form will also see that the highest forms that it is given to the human spirit to recognize have always been, psychologically considered, such evasions from the present. Considerations such as these do not at all square with the direction of America's mind.”

“Every epoch which seeks renewal first projects its ideal into a human form. In order to comprehend its own essence tangibly, the spirit of the time chooses a human being as its prototype and raising this single individual, often one upon whom it has chanced to come, far beyond his measure, the spirit enthuses itself for its own enthusiasm.”

Firsts Humans Form Spirit Order Individual Change Human Beings History Projects Ideals Essence Enthusiasm Renewal Epoch Human Form Prototype

Author:Stefan Zweig

“History in the making is a very uncertain thing. It might be better to wait till the South American republic has got through withits twenty-fifth revolution before reading much about it. When it is over, some one whose business it is, will be sure to give you in a digested form all that it concerns you to know, and save you trouble, confusion, and time. If you will follow this plan, you will be surprised to find how new and fresh your interest in what you read will become.”

Ifs Knows Giving Might Form Reading Waiting Interest History Plans Trouble Revolution News Concern Twenties South Confusion Republic Uncertain Fifth

Author:Anna Brackett

“We decipherers cannot afford to be as picky as the linguist, who can always run back to a native speaker for a few more forms.”

Running Form History Native Speakers Picky Linguists

Book:Archaeological Decipherment: A Handbook

Source: Archaeological Decipherment: A Handbook

“At the dawn of the 21st century, a free people must now choose to shape the forces of the Information Age and the global society, to unleash the limitless potential of all our people, and yes, to form a more perfect union.”

People Age Form Force Perfect History Century Information Shapes Unions Dawn 21st Century Limitless Information Age Limitless Potential

Book:Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton, 1997

Source: Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton, 1997

“...scientific power is like inherited wealth: attained without discipline. You read what others have done, and you take the next step. You can do it very young...there is no mastery, old scientists are ignored. There is no humility before nature...Its a form of inherited wealth. And you know what assholes congenitally rich people are.”

People Knows Done Form Young Next Can Do Wealth Steps History Rich Humility Discipline Scientist Mastery Ignored You Can Do It Rich People Next Steps Inherited Wealth

Author:Michael Crichton

“If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten.”

Ifs Writing Stories Form History Taught Forgotten Storytelling Storyteller Telling Stories Good Storytelling

Author:Rudyard Kipling

“History, as the study of the past, makes the coherence of what happened comprehensible by reducing events to a dramatic pattern and seeming them in a simple form.”

Past Form Simple History Study Happened Events Patterns Dramatic Reducing Seeming Coherence

Author:Johan Huizinga

“Every work of history constructs contexts and designs, forms in which past reality can be comprehended. History creates comprehensibility primarily by arranging facts meaningfully and only in a very limited sense by establishing strict causal connections.”

Inspirational Facts Reality Motivational Past Form History Design Connections Strict Constructs Arranging

Book:Men and Ideas: History, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance

Source: Men and Ideas: History, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance

“The only form of fiction in which real characters do not seem out of place is history. In novels they are detestable.”

Real Character Seems Form Fiction History Novel Real Character

Book:A Critic in Pall Mall: Being Extracts from Reviews and Miscellanies

Source: A Critic in Pall Mall: Being Extracts from Reviews and Miscellanies

“History is an indispensable even though not the highest form of intellectual endeavor.”

Form History Highest Intellectual Endeavor Indispensable

Author:Carl L. Becker

“The form of a town changes more swiftly alas! Than the heart of a mortal.”

Heart Form History Towns Mortals Alas

Author:Charles Baudelaire

“Time in its irresistible and ceaseless flow carries along on its flood all created things and drowns them in the depths of obscurity. . . . But the tale of history forms a very strong bulwark against the stream of time, and checks in some measure its irresistible flow, so that, of all things done in it, as many as history has taken over it secures and binds together, and does not allow them to slip away into the abyss of oblivion.”

Doe Done Together Form Strong History Taken Flow All Things Depth Checks Tales Streams Carrie Over It Slips Very Strong Flood Abyss Oblivion Irresistible Obscurity Things Done

Author:Anna Komnene

“Each age tries to form its own conception of the past. Each age writes the history of the past anew with reference to the conditions uppermost in its own time.”

Writing Trying Age Past Form History Conditions Conception

Book:History, Frontier, and Section: Three Essays

Source: History, Frontier, and Section: Three Essays

“Heroes and scholars represent the opposite extremes... The scholar struggles for the benefit of all humanity, sometimes to reduce physical effort, sometimes to reduce pain, and sometimes to postpone death, or at least render it more bearable. In contrast, the patriot sacrifices a rather substantial part of humanity for the sake of his own prestige. His statue is always erected on a pedestal of ruins and corpses... In contrast, all humanity crowns a scholar, love forms the pedestal of his statues, and his triumphs defy the desecration of time and the judgment of history.”

“The chemical differences among various species and genera of animals and plants are certainly as significant for the history of their origins as the differences in form. If we could define clearly the differences in molecular constitution and functions of different kinds of organisms, there would be possible a more illuminating and deeper understanding of question of the evolutionary reactions of organisms than could ever be expected from morphological considerations.”

“What is a novel if not a conviction of our fellow men's existence strong enough to take upon itself a form of imagined life clearer than reality and whose accumulated verisimilitude of selected episodes puts to shame the pride of documentary history.”

Ifs Men Enough Reality Form Strong Existence History Novel Pride Shame Fellows Conviction Episodes Documentaries Fellow Man Strong Enough Selected

Book:The Complete Works of Joseph Conrad

Source: The Complete Works of Joseph Conrad

“The six thousand years of human history form but a portion of the geologic day that is passing over us: they do not extend into the yesterday of the globe, far less touch the myriads of ages spread out beyond.”

Years Humans Age Form Science History Thousand Six Spread Yesterday Passing Passings Portions Globes Thousand Years Human History Geology

Book:An Autobiography: My Schools and Schoolmasters; Or, The Story of My Education

Source: An Autobiography: My Schools and Schoolmasters; Or, The Story of My Education

“[Theodore Roosevelt] was a naturalist on the broadest grounds, uniting much technical knowledge with knowledge of the daily lives and habits of all forms of wild life. He probably knew tenfold more natural history than all the presidents who had preceded him, and, I think one is safe in saying, more human history also.”

Thinking Humans Form Science President Natural Knowledge History Habit Safe Daily Life Human History Naturalist Uniting Natural History Theodore Technical Knowledge Wild Life

Author:John Burroughs

“Scientific practice is above all a story-telling practice. ... Biology is inherently historical, and its form of discourse is inherently narrative. ... Biology as a way of knowing the world is kin to Romantic literature, with its discourse about organic form and function. Biology is the fiction appropriate to objects called organisms; biology fashions the facts "discovered" about organic beings.”

World Way Facts Stories Form Science Literature Fiction Knowledge Practice History Knowing Fashion Objects Accounts Function Historical Narrative Appropriate Biology Organisms Discourse

Author:Donna J. Haraway

“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.”

Life States Form Science History Periods Series Species Proportion Primitive Germs

Author:Fritz Muller

“Whoever can conquer the street will one day conquer the state, for every form of power politics and any dictatorship-run state has its roots in the street.”

States Running Form History Streets One Day Roots Conquer Dictatorship Nazism Nazi Germany Power Politics

Author:Joseph Goebbels

“The theatre, for all its artifices, depicts life in a sense more truly than history, because the medium has a kindred movement to that of real life, though an artificial setting and form.”

Real Form History Movement Theater Theatre Real Life Setting Mediums Settings Artificial Kindred Artifice

Book:The Essential Santayana: Selected Writings

Source: The Essential Santayana: Selected Writings

“Historians constantly rewrite history, reinterpreting (reorganizing) the records of the past. So, too, when the brain's coherent responses become part of a memory, they are organized anew as part of the structure of consciousness. What makes them memories is that they become part of that structure and thus form part of the sense of self; my sense of self derives from a certainty that my experiences refer back to me, the individual who is having them. Hence the sense of the past, of history, of memory, is in part the creation of the self.”

Self Past Form Individual Memories Brain Consciousness History Records Creation Structure Response Certainty Organized Historian Self Conscious Sense Of Self Self Consciousness

Author:Israel Rosenfield