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History Quotes

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History Quotes

“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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“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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“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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“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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“History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.”

PeopleWisdomPoliticalPoliticsSocialSilenceHistoryEconomyRecordsPeriodsSadTragedySocial JusticeGoodAfrican AmericanLiberalismTransitionGood PeopleBad PeopleClamorBad RelationshipSocial MovementsAnti RacismSocial EqualityEnding RacismInjustice Anywhere
Book:The Wisdom of Martin Luther King, Jr
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“The study of history is the best medicine for a sick mind; for in history you have a record of the infinite variety of human experience plainly set out for all to see; and in that record you can find yourself and your country both examples and warnings; fine things to take as models, base things rotten through and through, to avoid.”

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Book:The History of Early Rome
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“Civilization is a stream with banks. The stream is sometimes filled with blood from people killing, stealing, shouting and doing the things historians usually record, while on the banks, unnoticed, people build homes, make love, raise children, sing songs, write poetry and even whittle statues. The story of civilization is what happened on the banks.”

PeopleLoveWritingChildrenSometimesStoriesHomeMotivationalFaithSongCommunityHistoryRecordsHappenedBloodSocietyCivilizationRaisesFilledKillingStealingStreamsHistorianMaking LoveStatuesShoutingUnnoticed
Author:Will Durant
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“Among the older records, we find chapter after chapter of which we can read the characters, and make out their meaning: and as we approach the period of man's creation, our book becomes more clear, and nature seems to speak to us in language so like our own, that we easily comprehend it. But just as we begin to enter on the history of physical changes going on before our eyes, and in which we ourselves bear a part, our chronicle seems to fail us-a leaf has been torn out from nature's record, and the succession of events is almost hidden from our eyes.”

MenHas BeensBookCharacterSeemsEyeScienceSpeakLanguageNatureHistoryClearRecordsFailingEventsCreationFailureBearsPeriodsApproachChaptersLeafsTornSuccessionMake OutChronicles
Book:A complete guide to the Lakes, comprising minute directions for the tourist, with mr. Wordsworth's Description of the scenery of the country, &c. and Three letters upon the geology of the Lake district, by prof. Sedgwick
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“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.”

SelfPastFormIndividualMemoriesBrainConsciousnessHistoryRecordsCreationStructureResponseCertaintyOrganizedHistorianSelf ConsciousSense Of SelfSelf Consciousness
Author:Israel Rosenfield
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