Quotessence
Home / Topics / World History Quotes

World History Quotes

Browse 472 quotes about World History.

Related topics

World History Quotes

“By the time the war ended, Iceland was a changed country. Not least among the changes, in 1944 it had negotiated full independence from Denmark. Now it was free to negotiate its own relations with the rest of the world. Because of cod, it had moved in one generation from a fifteenth-century colonial society to a modern postwar nation.”

“You can do anything you put your mind to doing.”

“Own your color, your accent, own your stories, your theologies, be proud of your sweat, your stubborn dignity – for the North wrote itself as civilized, but we, the Global South, authored humanity. They told us, history is white, holiness is western, progress is european – but the hands that built the world, with science, medicine, poetry, philosophy, astronomy and mathematics, were black, brown and indigenous.”

“The foolishness of the politicians of that era brought on the “First World War” But it was the people that had to fight it. The trenches that the soldiers dug and the craters from the artillery are still visible to visitors. The cemeteries where the fallen are buried, show that the majority were just young men, whereas the politicians, who were to blame, had mostly white hair and did little or no fighting! To secure our future we must read and learn from history!”

“Although his log entries do not speak of America per se, a chart created by Admiral Zheng was used to make a detailed map of the world. A copy of this map, drawn in 1763, was found in a second-hand bookshop and was offered as evidence that Zheng’s fleet was the first to discover America. At the age of 61, Admiral Zheng died aboard ship and befittingly was buried at sea. The Chinese sailed on very large ships, some of which were 450 feet long and 180 feet wide, in fact larger than any other of that time. They were certainly large enough to circumnavigate the world. Typical donut-shaped stone anchors of the type used by the Chinese have been found off the coast of California, as well as the west coast of South America, substantiating their claims. Zheng’s journal states that it took 270 days to sail from China to California on his voyage across the Pacific. On another expedition, he described rounding the bottom of Africa and sailing into the Atlantic, to what could well have been South America and the Caribbean.”

“During World War I, German South-West Africa (now called Namibia) was invaded and administered by South African and British forces. Following the war, its administration was taken over by the Union of South Africa, and the territory was governed under a trusteeship granted in 1920 by the League of Nations. A request made by the Union of South Africa that they be able to incorporate the territory of South-West Africa into their sovereign boundaries was countered by the President-General of The African National Congress (ANC), Dr. AB Xuma, who on January 22, 1946, cabled the United Nations with his concerns regarding the absorption of South-West Africa into the Union of South Africa. As a result, the United Nations requested that the Union of South Africa place the territory of South-West Africa under a UN trusteeship, allowing international monitoring. The Union of South Africa rejected this request. On August 26, 1966, having become the Republic of South Africa, it continued its jurisdiction over South-West Africa and refused to leave. As a result, a conflict began with the first clash occurring between the Republic of South Africa’s Police Force and the People’s Liberation Army of Namibia. This started what came to be known as the Border War. In 1971 the International Court of Justice, the primary judicial branch of the United Nations, based at the Peace Palace in the Hague, Netherlands, ruled that the Republic of South Africa’s jurisdiction over the Namibian Territory was illegal and that they should withdraw.”

“Divorce was legalized in Maryland and Holland adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1701. On that same date the German Hohenzollern royal family was developed from former emperors, kings, princes who were descended of the Germanic kingdoms scattered throughout central Europe. On April 9, 1865, in America, General Robert E. Lee of the Confederate States of America, ended the Civil War by surrendering to General Ulysses S. Grant, Commander of the United States Forces. It wasn’t even a week later, when on April 14th, Abraham Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth, while watching “Our American Cousin” at the Ford Theater. The following day, as Lincoln lay dying in Washington, D.C., Otto Von Bismarck, a conservative Prussian statesman was elevated to the rank of Count of Bismarck-Schönhausen in Europe. During the second half of the 19th century as Bismarck ran German and dominated European history, Cuba fought for its independence from Spain. On April 25, 1898, at the start of the Industrial Revolution, the United States declared war against Spain. The century ended with turmoil in Europe, a free Cuba and the United States as the new world power!”

“Opening European Trade with Asia Marco Polo was an Italian merchant whose travels introduced Europeans to Central Asia and China. In the 13th century the traditional trade route leading to China was overland, traveling through the Middle East from the countries of Europe. Marco Polo established this trade route but it required ships to carry the heavy loads of silks and spices. Returning to Italy after 24 he found Venice at war with Genoa. In 1299, after having been imprisoned, his cell-mate recorded his experiences in the book “The Travels of Marco Polo.” Upon his release he became a wealthy merchant, married, and had three children. He died in 1324 and was buried in the church of San Lorenzo in Venice. Henry the Navigator charted the course from Portugal to the Cape of Good Hope on the southern tip of Africa and is given credit for having started the Age of Discoveries. During the first half of the 15th century he explored the coast of West Africa and the islands of the Atlantic Ocean, in search of better routes to Asia. Five years after Columbus discovered the West Indies, Vasco da Gama rounded the southern point of Africa and discovered a sea route to India. In 1497, on his first voyage he opened European trade with Asia by an ocean route. Because of the immense distance around Africa, this passage became the longest sea voyage made at the time.”

“The Earth is Round! Nothing, other than perhaps our universe, started in a vacuum and neither did the discovery of the Americas, which of course included the island of Cuba. Why did Columbus want to sail for parts unknown? What was going through his mind when he turned his small fleet of three ships in a westerly direction and headed towards the edge of the world? Surely, he didn’t have a death wish, so what was it that he knew that the rest of the 15th century world didn’t? Scholars recalled that there had been a grand library in Alexandria, Egypt, that contained as many as 500,000 scrolls. These were the records of human endeavors, and the shared knowledge known to the people of that era. Many of these scrolls concerned themselves with science, history and the earthly wisdom that scholars wanted to share with others. Unfortunately, everything in the library was lost, when this magnificent structure burned to the ground in 48 BC however educated people still had a better understanding of Earth and their surroundings than we give them credit for. It was a fact that many did know that the Earth was round and speculated that navigators could sail west and arrive in the Far East!”

“Ascension Island Along the western coast of the Sahara desert, about half way between the Canary Islands and the Cape Verde Islands, lies a sand spit called Cape Barbas. In 1441, ships attached to Estêvão da Gama’s fleet were sent by Prince Henry to explore the coastline south of Cape Barbas, which, five years earlier, was the farthest point reached by any of Prince Henry’s captains. Although there are some conflicting stories regarding the discoveries of the mid-Atlantic islands, it is safe to assume that in 1501 João da Nova discovered Ascension Island. The desolate island remained deserted until it was rediscovered two years later on Ascension Day by Alfonso de Albuquerque. He was also the first European to discover the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. Having been to most of these exotic locations I know that Ascension Island is the very top of a mostly submerged mid-Atlantic mountain. It is part of the mid-ocean ridge which is by far the longest mountain range on earth. As an active fault line it starts north of Iceland becoming the Reykjanes Ridge as it crosses the northern Island Nation and finishes in the Indian Ocean south of the Cape of Good Hope in Africa. Because of this active ridge, South America and Africa are 1,600 miles apart and dovetail each other, spreading apart at an annual rate of about 1 1/8 inches.”

“South Earth Summon (Naskaristana 2800) I am the Son of South Earth, my spice-tolerance is superhuman, but lies-tolerance is nonexistent - my resilience knows no mortal limit, but I have zero tolerance for intolerance. I speak more languages than most northerners, I've devoured more scriptures than most northerners, I have assimilated more cultures and disciplines, which is why I say, there is no north, no south, when it comes to virtues and vices of human nature. So I'm not saying South is better than the North, but reparations are foundational to civilization; enlightenment was born in the South of Earth - math, medicine, poetry, philosophy, theology, almost everything was invented in the South, then the Northerners barged in, and pretended they invented astrophysics. I come from the other half of the world that has been systematically reduced to footnotes of northernized history normalized as world history, now I am a bigger giant than all your white giants combined, now I speak, and you listen.”

“Eurocentrism - The First Global Catastrophe (Sonnet 2626) Climate change is nothing, the first humanly caused global catastrophe was eurocentrism - before colonials, science was rooted in society, and philosophy was rooted in community, not snobbery, medicine was centered on people, not profit, religion was lived experience, not salesmanship - farmland was family, not property, innovation empowered life, not luxury - psychology prioritized understanding and healing, not analysis and isolation, poetry was the everyday way of life, not aristocratic escapism. Sure, there was superstition back then as well, but no superstition of the pre-colonial world comes close in atrocity to the fancy superstitions of the imperials marketed as progress. Eurocentrism is the biggest impediment to education - stand and burn the colonial syllabus, that's enlightenment!”

“Before colonials, science was rooted in society, and philosophy was rooted in community, not snobbery, medicine was centered on people, not profit, religion was lived experience, not salesmanship. Sure, there was superstition back then as well, but no superstition of the pre-colonial world comes close in atrocity to the fancy superstitions of the imperials marketed as progress. Eurocentrism is the biggest impediment to education - stand and burn the colonial syllabus, that's enlightenment!”

“In sciences white people are not the pioneers, in philosophy white people are not the pioneers, in art and astrophysics whiteys are not the pioneers, in medicine and mathematics whiteys are not the pioneers, then how on earth did you come by this insane inkling that white people are the super race, how many bottles did you have, or did you bang your head against the rocks while making fire!”

“We are hardly the first victims of perfidious Soviet policy, which has, already several times in history, placed the interests of power of the Greater Russian Empire— which is probably the most suitable name for the true essence of the complicated little internal Soviet unions— above all the interests of proletarian internationalism. What was the annexation of the Baltic peoples, the Latvians, Lithuanians and Estonians? To this day, he hatred these nations feel for the Russians is so great that a European [sic] cannot even comprehend it. Mladý svět (Young World), special edition no. 4, 26 August 1968”

“White supremacists boast about white americans being superior. Let's look at it reasonably, shall we - not that you can reason with fanatics! Most of the third world speaks two or three languages, yet you say, white americans are superior! Dreamers from the third world bear ten times more difficulty to achieve their dream, yet you say, white americans are superior! Humankind's earliest scientific achievements came not from the West, but from the East and the Middle East, yet you say, America is superior - a juvenile country whose very existence is rooted in humankind's worst of atrocities. Well done! You really are superior - in cooking up fiction. The fact of the matter is, excellence has no race. And the only inferior people on earth are the ones who think of others as such.”

“In 1934, my parents and the aunts and uncles that accompanied them on their return to Germany, stayed with my grandmother and other family members during this difficult time. To get away from the overwhelming stress everyone felt, they took a day’s outing to the grassy countryside known as die Luneburger Heide, which lay about 50 km southeast of Hamburg. North Germany is not known for its good weather, but I heard that on that particular day it was sunny and perfect for a picnic. From their slightly elevated vantage point, they watched a parade of young men in the Hitler Youth march by. As the band played and the Nazi flag fluttered, most of the people got up out of respect… or could it have been from fear? That is, everyone but my family stood up! They were new Americans and proud of their adopted country, so they alone didn’t salute the repressive flag that was paraded by and they certainly didn’t feel that they had to show any loyalty to it. It did not take long before my family was aggressively surrounded by “Nazi Brown Shirts” and confronted for this unpardonable violation. Pretending not to understand German or the importance of the circumstances, they were allowed to depart from the scene, being thought of as uneducated schweinehunde, another derogatory slang word meaning pig-dogs. It seems that this conflict could have been avoided, had they just stood up and paid due deference to the flag. Considering the times, it was lucky that they got away with their little scam. To the Nazis it was not just a game, the swastika represented their new order, in defiance of the Treaty of Versailles. I don’t know if my family realized how lucky they were, that this incident didn’t escalate. It is interesting to note that civil servants and members of the German military were expected to take oaths pledged to Hitler himself, and not to the Constitution or the German state. Oaths were taken very seriously by members of the German armed forces. They considered them to be part of a personal code of honor. This put the military in a position of personal servitude, making them the personal instrument of Hitler. In September of that year, at the annual Nuremberg Nazi Party rallies, Hitler euphemistically proclaimed that the German form of life would continue for the next thousand years.”

“Present day interactions between the races are directly related to what happened many generations ago. Although we as a people are not directly to blame for what happened those many years ago, many of us do carry with us a collective guilt or shame that can only be attributed to these events. However, we are responsible for how we interact with people of all races now. I am of the opinion that how we feel and act towards others, to a great extent came to us from our elders and the society that we grew up in. Although some of us show more hostile feelings towards people of other races than others, we should all be aware of the bigoted feelings and attitudes that lurk deep within us and our society. Perhaps by overtly attempting to rid ourselves of these hostilities, we can better learn to live together....”

“In 1822, the American Colonization Society established a new colony on the West Coast of Africa that in 1847 became the independent nation of Liberia. By 1867, the American Colonization Society had sent more than 13,000 former *blanks* to this new country.In the 1830s, the Society was harshly attacked by abolitionists, who tried to discredit colonization as a scheme perpetrated by the *blankholders* to rid themselves of any responsibility regarding the freeing of their former *blanks*.Some years later, after the Civil War, when many blacks actually wanted to go to the new country of Liberia, the money needed to send them back had dried up. During the latter part of the 19th century the American Colonization Society stopped transporting former *blanks* to West Africa and used its money on educational and missionary efforts, thereby promoting its religious agenda instead.”

“Studying the world's oldest writing for the first time compels you to wonder about what writing is and how it came about more than five thousand years ago and what the world might have looked like without it. Writing as I would define it serves to record language by means of an agreed set of symbols that enable a message to be played back like a wax cylinder recording. The reader's eye runs over the signs and tells the brain how each is pronounced and the inner message springs into life.”

“Experts have called Donald Trump's ignorance "breathtaking." Jeffrey Goldberg has said that Trump has "no understanding of the post-war international order that was created by the United States." Goldberg further stated that Trump shows "little interest in understanding why the world is organized the way it is.”

“World History 101 - The Actual History History is not a record of truth, history is a record of triumph. The triumphant writes history as it fits their narrative - or to be more accurate, history is written by the conquerors for maintaining the supremacy of the conquerors, while the conquered lose everything. Let me give you an example. In a commendable endeavor of goodwill and reparations a descendant of the British conquerors, President Lyndon Johnson started Hispanic Heritage Week, which was later expanded into a month by another white descendant, President Ronald Reagan - fast forward to present time - during the Hispanic Heritage Month the entire North America tries to celebrate Native American history. But there is a glitch - Spanish is not even a Native American language. Native Americans did not even speak Spanish, until the brutes of Spain overran Puerto Rico like pest bearing disease and destruction, after a pathetic criminal called Columbus stumbled upon "La Isabela" in the 1500s. Many of the natives struggled till death to save their home - many were killed by the foreign diseases to which they had no immunity. Those who lived, every last trace of their identity was wiped out, by the all-powerful and glorious spanish colonizers - their language, their traditions, their heritage, everything - just like the Portuguese did in Brazil. The Spaniards would've done the same to Philippines on the other side of the globe, had they had the convenience to stay longer. Heck, even the name Philippines is not the original name - the original name of the islands was (probably) Maniolas, as referred to by Ptolemy. But when the Spaniard retards of the time set foot there, they named it after, then crown prince, later Philip II of Spain. Just reminiscing those abominable atrocities makes my blood boil, and yet somehow, the brutal "glory" of the conquerors lives on as such even in this day and age, as glory that is. That's why José Martí is so important, that's why Kwanzaa is so important, that's why Darna is so important - in the making of a world that has a place for every culture, not just the culture of the conquerors. No other "civilized" people have done more damage to the world than the Europeans, and yet, on the pages of history books their glory of conquest is still packaged as glory, not as atrocity. Why is that? I don't know the answer - do you? Trillions of dollars, pounds and euros in aid won't suffice to undo the damage - but what just might heal those wounds from the past, is if the offspring of the oppressors and the offspring of the oppressed, both hand in hand and shoulder to shoulder, unravel the history as it happened, not as it was presented - what just might heal the scars of yesterday, is if together we come forward to learn about each other's past, so that for the first time in history, we can actually write "human history", not the "conquerors' history" - so that for the first time ever, we write history not as conquerors and conquered, not as oppressors and oppressed, but as one species - as one humankind.”

“Having voted for independence, they now needed to discuss and vote on the text of a declaration of independence that Thomas Jefferson had drawn up. The text Jefferson had written was read aloud, and throughout the day the delegates made changes. They deleted about twenty-five percent of the text, thinking it not applicable, or too emotive, or beside the point.”

“More often and more insistently as that time recedes, we are asked by the young who our "torturers" were, of what cloth were they made. The term torturers alludes to our ex-guardians, the SS, and is in my opinion inappropriate: it brings to mind twisted individuals, ill-born, sadists, afflicted by an original flaw. Instead, they were made of the same cloth as we, they were average human beings, averagely intelligent, averagely wicked: save the exceptions, they were not monsters, they had our faces, but they had been reared badly. They were, for the greater part, diligent followers and functionaries, some frantically convinced of the Nazi doctrine, many indifferent, or fearful of punishment, or desirous of a good career, or too obedient. All of them had been subjected to the terrifying miseducation provided for and imposed by the schools created in accordance with the wishes of Hitler and his collaborators, and then completed by the SS "drill." Many had joined this militia because of the prestige it conferred, because of its omnipotence, or even just to escape family problems. Some, very few in truth, had changes of heart, requested transfers to the front lines, gave cautious help to prisoners or chose suicide. Let it be clear that to a greater or lesser degree all were responsible, but it must bee just as clear that behind their responsibility stands that the great majority of Germans who accepted in the beginning, out of mental laziness, myopic calculation, stupidity, and national pride the "beautiful words" of Corporal Hitler, followed him as long as luck and lack of scruples favored him, were swept away by his ruin, afflicted by deaths, misery, and remorse, and rehabilitated a few years later as the result of an unprincipled political game.”

“. . . I've learned over the years that if more people knew more about history, our world would be a better place. History is constantly speaking to us. Travelers enjoy a privileged way to hear it—and sometimes an up-close chance to witness history in the making.”

“All too often world history is told as if religion did not matter. The Spanish conquered New Spain for gold, and the British came to New England to catch fish. The French Revolution had nothing to do with Catholicism, and the U.S. civil rights movement was a purely humanitarian endeavor. But even if religion makes no sense to you, you need to make sense of religion to make sense of the world.”

“There never was a war of the free world against fascism, there was only war between two versions of fascism - because the so-called free world has tortured and massacred more lives than the third reich could only dream of. There never was a world war between good and evil, there was only war between two evils. There never was a world war against tyranny, there was only war between an established tyrant regime and a rising one. The real first world war has just begun - the war between good and evil - the war between emancipation and occupation - between inclusion and exclusion - between expansion and contraction - between reason and rigidity - between humanity and inhumanity. I call it, World War Human. And unlike previous times, we won't win this war by old-fashioned bullets and bombs, or by deceit and diplomacy. The World War Human can only be won by education, and education alone - by an ardent, absolute, unambiguous, unbending, undoctrinated, unphobic, unwhitewashed, decolonized, nonpartisan, gender neutral, valiant, self-correcting and conscientious execution of education.”

“I hold the view that the World Spirit has given the times the order to advance; such an order is obeyed; this being strides forward like an armored, firmly closed phalanx, irresistibly and as imperceptibly as the sun moves, through thick and thin; it is flanked by innumerable light troops for and against it; most of them have no idea of what is at stake, and only get knocked on over the head, as if by an invisible hand. All the hesitant fibbing and sophisticated shadow boxing in the world is of no help against it; it can only reach about as high as the shoelaces of this colossus and smear a bit of mud or shoe polish on them, but it cannot loosen them, much less remove the divine shoes with the elastic soles or the seven-league boots, if the colossus puts them on. The safest game (both inwardly and outwardly) is, I dare say, to keep one's eye on the advancing giant.”

“The history of the world is a whitewashed history, where great many facts are distorted to maintain white supremacy – such as Columbus discovering America or Gandhi liberating India – Gandhi didn’t liberate India, Subhas Chandra Bose did and Columbus never even set foot on America.”