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History Quotes

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History Quotes

“The fundamental differences between Marxian and traditional orthodox economics are, first, that the orthodox economists accept the capitalist system as part of the eternal order of Nature, while Marx regards it as a passing phase in the transition from the feudal economy of the past to the socialist economy of the future.”

FirstsPastOrderPoliticsNatureCommunityDifferencesWorkMoneyAcceptingHistoryEconomyGenerationsHuman NaturePolicyEternalCapitalismEconomicsRegardFundamentalsStrategySocialismPassingPassingsTraditionalOrthodoxTransitionCapitalistPhasesSocialistEconomistSocialist Economy
Book:Essay on Marxian Economics
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“In general, life is better than it has ever been, and if you think that, in the past, there was some golden age of pleasure and plenty to which you would, if you were able, transport yourself, let me say one single word : Dentistry.”

IfsThinkingAgeAblePastLife IsPleasureHistoryHumourLet MeGoldenPlentyTransportGolden AgeSingle WordDentistry
Book:All the Trouble in the World: The Lighter Side of Overpopulation, Famine, Ecological Disaster, Ethnic Hatred, Plague, and Poverty
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“History, the winnowing wind, never halts. We see the chaff rise, forget the waiting grain, seed of the future, fallen to the threshing floor. We never learn, but live on, slit-narrow, as if our living were a pencil line traced upon paper, behaving as trapped denizens of a flat world hemmed in by the bigoted horizon of our own making. Yet the meaning of living is a pushing back, a pulling down of the great walls and domes of fear and ignorance, is relinquishing the nest for the sky, ignorance for understanding. The look back is also a look forward.”

IfsWorldLooksPastWaitingUnderstandingLinesForgetHistorySkyIgnoranceWindWallPaperSeedsFallenPushingFlatsHorizonGrainTrappedPullingPencilsNestsHaltDomesSlitsRelinquishingGreat WallPushing Back
Author:Han Suyin
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“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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“History, which undertakes to record the transactions of the past, for the instruction of future ages, would ill deserve that honourable office if she condescended to plead the cause of tyrants, or to justify the maxims of persecution.”

IfsAgePastCausesHistoryRecordsOfficeDeserveIllJustifyTyrantsInstructionPersecutionMaximsRoman EmpireTransactions
Book:The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
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“The pastoral labours of the archbishop of Constantinople provoked and gradually united against him two sorts of enemies; the aspiring clergy, who envied his success, and the obstinate sinners, who were offended by his reproofs. When Chrysostom thundered from the pulpit of St. Sophia against the degeneracy of the Christians, his shafts were spent among the crowd, without wounding or even marking the character of any individual.”

TwoCharacterChristianPastIndividualUnitedEnemyHistoryCrowdsLabourSinnerOffendedRoman EmpireClergyPulpitEnviedObstinateProvokedSophiaReproofConstantinople
Book:The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
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“The laws of war, that restrain the exercise of national rapine and murder, are founded on two principles of substantial interest: the knowledge of the permanent benefits which may be obtained by a moderate use of conquest, and a just apprehension lest the desolation which we inflict on the enemy's country may be retaliated on our own. But these considerations of hope and fear are almost unknown in the pastoral state of nations.”

MayTwoWarCountryStatesUsePastLawNationsInterestEnemyPrinciplesHistoryExerciseBenefitsMurderPermanentConsiderationConquestModeratesApprehensionRoman EmpireDesolationHopes And Fears
Book:The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
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“... if, as women, we accept a philosophy of history that asserts that women are by definition assimilated into the male universal,that we can understand our past through a male lens--if we are unaware that women even have a history--we live our lives similarly unanchored, drifting in response to a veering wind of myth and bias.”

IfsPhilosophyPastAcceptingHistoryOur LivesWindUniversalResponseMalesDefinitionsMythBiasOur PastLensesDrifting
Book:Blood, Bread, and Poetry: Selected Prose 1979-1985
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“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men's reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”

ThinkingMenNeedsArtTodayPastEasyAnswersHistoryGoneRecordsWrittenGenerationsDangerScaryDrivenBlockIdiotReasoningDelusionExceptionalContinuityRiddleQuicksandLifelinesGood Thinking
Book:Occasions and protests
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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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“There is one lesson from the past, in particular, that we cannot afford to ignore: You cannot make progress on gender equality or broader human development, without safeguarding women's reproductive health and rights.”

HumansWisdomRealityPastPoliticsCommunityLeadershipJusticeHistoryRightsProgressGenerationsPolicyParticularDevelopmentLessonsEqualEthicsStrategyUnityHuman RightsGenderIdeologyEqual RightsGender EqualityHuman DevelopmentReproductive HealthSafeguarding
Author:Hillary Clinton
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“It is important to note that multiculturalism does not share the postmodernist stance. Its passions are political; its assumptionsempirical; its conception of identities visceral. For it, there is no doubting that history is something that happened and that those happenings have left their mark within our collective consciousness. History for multiculturalists is not a succession of dissolving texts, but a tense tangle of past actions that have reshaped the landscape, distributed the nation's wealth, established boundaries, engendered prejudices, and unleashed energies.”

DoeImportantActionPastPoliticalPassionPoliticsEnergyLeftNationsWealthConsciousnessHistoryDoubtHappenedShareIdentityDiversityHappeningsPrejudiceMarkNotesBoundariesLandscapeCollectivesConceptionMulticulturalismTenseSuccessionStanceVisceralCultural DiversityUnleashedDissolvingCollective Consciousness
Author:Joyce Appleby
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“Our American past always speaks to us with two voices: the voice of the past, and the voice of the present. We are always asking two quite different questions. Historians reading the words of John Winthrop usually ask, What did they mean to him? Citizens ask, What do they mean to us? Historians are trained to seek the original meaning; all of us want to know the present meaning.”

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Author:Daniel J. Boorstin
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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.”

MenGivingImportantFactsHandsLightPastScienceReadingHistoryEventsDutyDevelopmentFitConcernedTasksScientistRelationFaithfulDescriptionEnlightenedHistorianHypothesisImportsInterpretingConjectureDoctoring
Book:The judgment of history
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“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it without a sense of ironic futility.”

PastRememberHistoryProgressRepeatsHistorianIronicDoomedYour PastFutilityInfancyPast And PresentPast PresentPast Present And FutureCondemningAuschwitzHiroshimaForget The PastPast Present FutureConfederateRemembering The PastStages Of LifeLearn From The PastPresent FuturePast MistakesFuture And PresentRepeating HistoryHistory Repeats ItselfHistory Of LifeInfancy IsPast Present Future LoveRepeated FailureKnowledge Of The PastLessons Of The PastHomestead Act
Author:Errol Morris
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“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”

DreamPastTimePeaceDestinyHistoryFutureHistoricalLibertarianThriveDystopianMy FutureDystopiaPast And PresentNineteenPresent TimePast PresentPast Present And FutureForget The PastLimiting GovernmentPast Present FutureLimited FreedomPower And ControlBright FuturePresent FutureFuture And PresentLooking To The FutureObjective RealityFuture TimeGreat FuturePast LovePast FuturePast Present Future LoveFuture DestinyIgnorance In 19841984 ImportantPolitical LanguageSlavery FreedomRevisionismRewriting HistoryShaping The FutureOceania
Author:George Orwell
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