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History Quotes

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History Quotes

“The world's history is constant, like the laws of nature, and simple, like the souls of men. The same conditions continually produce the same results.”

Men World Soul Law Simple Results History Conditions Produce Constant Laws Of Nature

Author:Friedrich Schiller

“In the old days it would have been a relatively simple matter to have checked Hitler's territorial ambitions. All you'd have needed would have been the 1914 combination of Britain, France and Russia. Indeed, if such an alliance had acted decisively to defend Czechoslovakia in 1938, Hitler might even have been overthrown by his own military. But it was not to be.”

Ifs Has Beens Matter Might Simple History Military Needed Ambition Russia France Combination Britain Alliances Old Days Territorial Czechoslovakia

Author:Niall Ferguson

“Must I shoot a simple-minded soldier boy who deserts, while I must not touch a hair of the wily agitator who induces him to desert? I think that in such a cse to silence the agitator and save the boy is not only constitutional but withal a great mercy.”

Thinking War Simple Silence Boys History Hair Mercy Soldier Desert Civil War American Civil War

Book:Abraham Lincoln, a Documentary Portrait Through His Speeches and Writings

Source: Abraham Lincoln, a Documentary Portrait Through His Speeches and Writings

“The pursuit of truth is just a polite name for the intellectual's favorite pastime of substituting simple and therefore false abstractions for the living complexities of reality.”

Art Philosophy Reality Names Simple History Truth Is Intellectual Pursuit Complexity Polite Abstraction Pastime

Book:The Collected Works of Aldous Huxley: Point counter point

Source: The Collected Works of Aldous Huxley: Point counter point

“The simple circumstantial narrative (did such a narrative exist) of the ruin of a single town, of the misfortunes of a single family, might exhibit an interesting and instructive picture of human manners; but the tedious repetition of vague and declamatory complaints would fatigue the attention of the most patient reader.”

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

“Congress needs to send a strong signal that direct communication with the leader of the free world is a privilege, particularly for a regime that has been as hostile as Iran has been towards America for more than three decades. President Rouhani needs to take these two simple steps to demonstrate good faith before any further discussions.”

“Want of foresight, unwillingness to act when action would be simple and effective, lack of clear thinking, confusion of counsel until the emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong - these are the features which constitute the endless repetition of history.”

Source: Churchill speaks: Winston S. Churchill in peace and war : collected speeches, 1897-1963

“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

“Life is not simple, and therefore history, which is past life, is not simple.”

Past Life Is Simple History Past Life

Author:David Shannon

“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.”

People World Giving Humans Helping Jobs Purpose Simple Existence History Politician Complicated Convinced Journalist Historian Historiography

Author:David Cannadine

“If a little less time was devoted to the translation of letters by Julius Caesar describing Britain 2000 years ago and a little more time was spent on teaching children how to describe (in simple modern English) the method whereby ethylene was converted into polythene in 1933 in the ICI laboratories at Northwich, and to discussing the enormous social changes which have resulted from this discovery, then I believe that we should be training future leaders in this country to face the world of tomorrow far more effectively than we are at the present time.”