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History Quotes

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History Quotes

“The triumph of the Confederacy... would be a victory for the powers of evil which would give courage to the enemies of progress and damp the sprits of its friends all over the civilized world... [The American Civil War] is destined to be a turning point, for good or evil, of the course of human affairs.”

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Author:John Stuart Mill
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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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“The elegance of dress, of motion, and of manners gives a lustre to beauty, and inflames the senses through the imagination. Luxurious entertainments, midnight dances, and licentious spectacles, present at once temptation and opportunity to female frailty. From such dangers the unpolished wives of the barbarians were secured by poverty, solitude, and the painful cares of a domestic life.”

GivingCareOpportunityImaginationPovertyHistoryWifeDangerSolitudeFemaleDressesPainfulEntertainmentSensesTemptationMannersMidnightEleganceBarbariansRoman EmpireFrailtySecuredSpectaclesLuxuriousDomestic Life
Book:The history of the decline and fall of the Roman empire, with notes by Milman and Guizot. Ed. by W. Smith
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“... the word "theory" ... was originally an Orphic word, which Cornford interprets as "passionate sympathetic contemplation" ... For Pythagoras, the "passionate sympathetic contemplation" was intellectual, and issued in mathematical knowledge ... To those who have reluctantly learnt a little mathematics in school this may seem strange; but to those who have experienced the intoxicating delight of sudden understanding that mathematics gives, from time to time, to those who love it, the Pythagorean view will seem completely natural.”

GivingMayLittlesSeemsSchoolUnderstandingNaturalViewsHistoryStrangeTheoryIntellectualMathematicsPassionateDelightMathematicalContemplationSympathetic
Book:History of Western Philosophy
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“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.”

GivingMindHumansMomentsLastsAmericaPastFormSpiritValuesCultureGivenWishRealizingHistoryMankindReadyHighestAbsolutesDenyConsiderationPresent MomentSquaresWorthlessHuman SpiritValue Of LifeEvasion
Author:Johan Huizinga
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“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.”

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Author:Anna Brackett
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“Geologists complain that when they want specimens of the common rocks of a country, they receive curious spars; just so, historians give us the extraordinary events and omit just what we want,--the every-day life of each particular time and country.”

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Book:Thoughts and Apophthegms: From the Writings of Archbishop Whateley
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“While the scientist, on the one hand, is concerned with giving a faithful description of facts, on the other, he has the equally important task of construing them in relation to some explanatory conjecture. Similarly the historian has a double duty: both of reporting the past as nearly as possible as it passed or was lived through by men at the time (without doctoring up events to fit later developments or some more "enlightened reading" of them); and second, of interpreting their import in the light of a present hypothesis.”

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Book:The judgment of history
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“Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!”

KnowsGivingMayWarAmericaDeathCoursesFreedomBusinessLibertyHistorySocietySweetRevolutionEthicsGive MeSlaveryDearLibertarianChainsPatriotismPatrioticAmendmentsLibertarianismAlmightyPatriotFounding4th Of JulyFreedom And LibertyFreedom LibertyOur Founding FathersProperty RightsAmerican RevolutionLimited GovernmentTotal WarFounding Fathers ChristianPriceAlmighty GodBearing ArmsFounding Fathers ReligionIndividual LibertyAmerican GovernmentLimiting GovernmentRights And FreedomsAmerican Founding FathersAmerican PatrioticLimited FreedomGreat PatrioticUs ConstitutionAmerican PatriotismAmerican LibertyFounding Fathers DemocracyAmerica FreedomPatriotism In AmericaPrice Of FreedomRevolution Founding FathersGood PatrioticLimiting FreedomConstitutional LawConstitutional GovernmentGod And CountryTyranny Founding FathersSecurity And FreedomAmerican Independence DayInspiring PatrioticSecurity And Liberty
Author:Patrick Henry
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“With Malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds.”

GivingGodNationsWorkBusinessHistorySocietySpeechCharityStriveWoundsCivil WarMaliceAmerican Civil WarFirmnessInaugurationInauguralChristian HeritageInaugural AddressGiving To CharityCharity And GivingCharity WorkCharity And LoveInaugural SpeechUs Civil War
Author:Abraham Lincoln
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“What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value.”

InspirationalGivingMotivationValuesPrinciplesHistoryDignityPerseveranceEsteemResolution4th Of JulyFreedom And LibertyFreedom LibertyKeep RunningGreat PatrioticEternal VigilanceAmerican LibertyLittle MindsRevolution Founding FathersAmerican FreedomStrength And PerseverancePerseverance In Love
Book:Thomas Paine on Liberty: Including Common Sense and Other Writings
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“The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much it is whether we provide enough for those who have little.”

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Author:Franklin D. Roosevelt
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“That historians should give their own country a break, I grant you; but not so as to state things contrary to fact. For there are plenty of mistakes made by writers out of ignorance, and which any man finds it difficult to avoid. But if we knowingly write what is false, whether for the sake of our country or our friends or just to be pleasant, what difference is there between us and hack writers? Readers should be very attentive to and critical of historians, and they in turn should be constantly on their guard.”

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Author:Polybius
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“The older I get the more I'm convinced that it's the purpose of politicians and journalists to say the world is very simple, whereas it's the purpose of historians to say, 'No! It's very complicated.' The job of the historian is to help give people a sense of existence in time, without which we are really not fully human.”

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Author:David Cannadine
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“"Historians of every generation, I believe, unless they are pure antiquarians, see history against the background - the controlling background - of current events. They call upon it to explain the problems of their own time, to give to those problems a philosophical context, a continuum in which they may be reduced to proportion and perhaps made intelligible."”

GivingBelieveMayMadeProblemI BelieveHistoryGenerationsEventsPurePhilosophicalCurrentsBackgroundsProportionHistorianContinuumCurrent Events
Author:Hugh Redwald Trevor-Roper
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“In historic events, the so-called great men are labels giving names to events, and like labels they have but the smallest connection with the event itself. Every act of theirs, which appears to them an act of their own will, is in an historical sense involuntary and is related to the whole course of history and predestined from eternity.”

MenGivingWholeCoursesNamesHistoryEventsGreatnessConnectionsEternityHistoricalLabelsRelatedGreat MenSmallestHistoricInvoluntaryPredestined
Author:Leo Tolstoy
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“Chamberlain's stubborn, fanatical insistence on giving Hitler what he wanted, his trips to Berchtesgaden and Godesberg and finally the fateful journey to Munich rescued Hitler from his limb and strengthened his position in Europe, in Germany, in the Army, beyond anything that could have been imagined a few weeks before. It also added immeasurably to the power of the Third Reich vis-a-vis the Western democracies and the Soviet Union.”

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Author:William L. Shirer
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“The value of money has been settled by general consent to express our wants and our property, as letters were invented to express our ideas; and both these institutions, by giving a more active energy to the powers and passions of human nature, have contributed to multiply the objects they were designed to represent.”

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Book:The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
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“To be hopeful in bad times is based on the fact that human history is not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand Utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”

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Author:Howard Zinn
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