Quotes About History

Music expresses feeling, that is to say, gives shape and habitation to feeling, not in space but in time. To the extent that music has a history that is more than a history of its formal evolution, our feelings must have a history too. Perhaps certain qualities of feeling that found expression in music can be recorded by being notated on paper, have become so remote that we can no longer inhabit them as feelings, can get a grasp of them only after long training in the history and philosophy of music, the philosophical history of music, the history of music as a history of the feeling soul.

Black History is enjoying the life of our ancestors who paved the way for every African-American. No matter what color you are, the history of Blacks affected everyone; that's why we should cherish and respect Black history. Black history changed America and is continuing to change and shape our country. Black history is about everyone coming together to better themselves and America. Black history is being comfortable in your own skin no matter what color you are. Black history makes me proud of where I came from and where I am going in life.

I am opposing it with an idea of the history of philosophy as a history of philosophers, that is, a history of mortal, fragile and limited creatures like you and I. I am against the idea of clean, clearly distinct epochs in the history of philosophy or indeed in anything else. I think that history is always messy, contingent, plural and material. I am against the constant revenge of idealism in how we think about history.

The real invasion of South Vietnam which was directed largely against the rural society began directly in 1962 after many years of working through mercenaries and client groups. And that fact simply does not exist in official American history. There is no such event in American history as the attack on South Vietnam. That's gone. Of course, It is a part of real history. But it's not a part of official history.

The introduction of the Christian religion into the world has produced an incalculable change in history. There had previously been only a history of nations--there is now a history of mankind; and the idea of an education of human nature as a whole.--an education the work of Jesus Christ Himself--is become like a compass for the historian, the key of history, and the hope of nations.

The gravest error a thinking person can make is to believe that one particular version of history is absolute fact. History is recorded by a series of observers, none of whom is impartial. The facts are distorted by sheer passage of time and thousands of years of humanity's dark ages, deliberate misrepresentations by religious sects, and the inevitable corruption that comes from an accumulation of careless mistakes. The wise person, then, views history as a set of lessons to be learned, choices and ramifications to be considered and discussed, and mistakes that should never again be made.

Racial history is therefore natural history and the mysticism of the soul at one and the same time; but the history of the religion of the blood, conversely, is the great world story of the rise and downfall of peoples, their heroes and thinkers, their inventors and artists.

In history there are no control groups. There is no one to tell us what might have been. We weep over the might have been, but there is no might have been. There never was. It is supposed to be true that those who do not know history are condemned to repeat it. I don't believe knowing can save us. What is constant in history is greed and foolishness and a love of blood and this is a thing that even God--who knows all that can be known--seems powerless to change.

History, when they do it, is ancient history, and they sensationalize even that. Contemporary history is virtually ignored on television.

I think we fool ourselves and really negate a great deal of history if we think that the oral history of poetry is shorter than the written history of poetry. It's not true. Poetry has a longer oral tradition than it does written

"The Universe repeats itself, with the possible exception of history." Of all earthly studies history is the only one that does not repeat itself. ... Astronomy repeats itself; botany repeats itself; trigonometry repeats itself; mechanics repeats itself; compound long division repeats itself. Every sum if worked out in the same way at any time will bring out the same answer. ... A great many moderns say that history is a science; if so it occupies a solitary and splendid elevation among the sciences; it is the only science the conclusions of which are always wrong.

I've benefited greatly from studying many effective people from history. Among those who've influenced me the most are Ronald Reagan, Theodore Roosevelt, and Winston Churchill. Each of the three altered history; each was self-created to a great extent; and each was a great student of history and leadership.

The history of man is the history of crimes, and history can repeat. So information is a defence. Through this we can build, we must build, a defence against repetition.

I am interested in the possibility that we are going to be wrong in the same way that history has indicated that mankind always is. It seems as though the history of ideas is the history of being wrong. And to me, that is a kind of continuum. It's a continual path that shows we don't always know something, but we're always shifting to a path that makes us feel more comfortable in the moment, even if that shift is wrong, and a new shift is destined to happen again.

Environmental history fit[s] into the framework of New Left history. [It is] history "from the bottom up," except that here the exploited element [is] the biota and the land itself.

I'm not against knowing the history of white people in the U.S. - that's not the point. The point is that there's so much greater history. We don't know about Native Americans. Very basically, we don't know that much about African American history, except that they were enslaved. You only get bits and pieces.

If somebody tells you 'History will never forgive you,' just laugh at him! Because when the history comes, you won't be here! The threat of history never forgives you is a useless threat!

What does the artist do? He draws connections. He ties the invisible threads between things. He dives into history, be it the history of mankind, the geological history of the Earth or the beginning and end of the manifest cosmos.

Reason is the true creative power, for it produces itself as Infinite Self-consciousness, and its ongoing creation is...world history. As the only power that exists, Spirit can therefore be determined by nothing other than itself, that is, its essence is Freedom...Freedom is the infinite power of Spirit...Freedom, the only End of Spirit, is also the only End of History, and history is nothing other than Spirit's becoming *conscious* of its Freedom, or the becoming of Real, Free, Infinite Self-consciousness.

For everything is history: What was said yesterday is history, what was said a minute ago is history. But, above all, one is led to misjudge the present, because only the study of historical development permits the weighing and evaluation of the interrelationships among the components of the present-day society.

What are your choices? Whom are your choices for? Not just for yourself. Chose now whom you will serve, and that choice is going to affect the next generation, and the next generation, and the next. Choice never affects just one person alone. It goes on and on and the effect goes out into geography and history. You are part of history and your choices become part of history.

Economist Frederick Thayer has studied the history of our balanced-budget crusades and has come up with some depressing statistics. We have had six major depressions in our history (1819, 1837, 1857, 1873, 1893 and 1929); all six of them followed sustained periods of reducing the national debt. We have had almost chronic deficits since the 1930s, and there has been no depression since then - the longest crash-free period in our history.

I have a new theory of history, which is certain things happen because they seem like a good idea at the time. And suburbia seemed like a good idea at the time, but it was a special time and place in history, with special dynamics. And now, we're going to have to live with the consequences of that. And the consequences will be tragic.

I watch Raffy as she removes the pickles from her hamburger and hands them over to Santangelo without them exchanging a word and I realize again there is more to that relationship than spelling bees and being enemies. These people have history and I crave history. I crave someone knowing me so well that they can tell what I'm thinking.

The notion of 'history from below' hit the history profession in England very hard around the time I came to Oxford in the early 1960s.

The written history of the world is largely a history of warfare, because the states within which we live came into existence largely through conquest, civil strife, or struggles for independence.

Literature makes history come to life. It is maybe the most accurate depiction of history, especially literature that was written in the time period depicted in the story.

Marxism: The theory that all the important things in history are rooted in an economic motive, that history is a science, a science of the search for food.

We believe that the history of the world is but the history of His influence and that the center of the whole universe is the cross of Calvary.

Anyone who knows history, particularly the history of Europe, will, I think, recognize that the domination of education or of government by any one particular religious faith is never a happy arrangement for the people.

The individual's life is of importance to none besides himself: the point is whether he wishes to escape from history or give his life for it. History recks nothing of human logic

Most romances aren't swept aside by big historical events. Most romances in the history of the world fall apart because of other, smaller happenings. History can sometimes be in the background, the thing which instead of rupturing your life merely irritates you by pressing itself now and then into the foreground.

I've always preferred mythology to history. History is truth that becomes an illusion. Mythology is an illusion that becomes reality.

The art of beautiful motion is far and away the oldest. Before man learned how to use any instruments at all, he moved the most perfect instrument of all, his body. He did this with such abandon that the cultural history of prehistoric and ancient man is, for the most part, nothing but the history of the dance.

Yeah, I read history. But it doesn't make you nice. Hitler read history, too.

The History of Evolution is the real source of light in the investigation of organic bodies. It is applicable at every step, and all our ideas of the correlation of organic bodies will be swayed by our knowledge of the history of evolution. To carry the proof of it into all branches of research would be an almost endless task. (1828)

I feel very strongly that history is about everything. It isn't just about politics or the military or social issues. If art, music, engineering, science, medicine, finance, the world of architecture and technology - if those are left out, then you're not getting a full sense of the human condition. History is human and we human beings are involved in all kinds of things and that's part of our humanity.

The creation story unfurling within the scientific enterprise provides the fundamental context, the fundamental arena of meaning, for all the peoples of the Earth. For the first time in human history, we can agree on the basic story of the galaxies, the stars, the planets, minerals, life forms, and human cultures. This story does not diminish the spiritual traditions of the classical or tribal periods of human history. Rather, the story provides the proper setting for the teachings of all traditions, showing the true magnitude of their central truths.

The long history of mankind is studded with convergences, perhaps most notably in social systems and the use of artefacts and technology. But for human history, set in the arrow of time, there appears to be one intolerable stumbling-block. This is the catastrophic failure in human values and decency.

Every man should write a brief history of his life: his parentage, his birth, his religion, when he was baptized and by whom, when ordained, what to, and by whom-give a brief sketch of all his missions and of all his official acts and the dealings of God with him. Then if he were to die and the historians wished to publish his history, they would have something to go by.

The history of mankind, the history of salvation, passes by way of the family... The family is placed at the center of the great struggle between good and evil, between life and death, between love and all that is opposed to love.

Fashion for me is the perfect combination of all the things I love. There's an element of history to it. I love understanding why people wear what they wear, why during certain periods in history women looked the way they looked. There was always a strong reason behind it, whether it was because of what was available to them or because of what was happening in the world politically or sociologically. Fashion is like an amazing blend of commerce, travel, and creativity - of studying what people were about during a particular time.

Wright and Cowen, who have separately written important scholarly works on the financial history of the early republic, here repackage their research for readers of popular history, and do so impressively.

Our history will be what we make of it. If we go on as we are, then history will take its revenge and retribution will not limp in catching up with us. So, just once in a while let us exhault the importance of ideas and information.

Alexander the Great changed a few boundaries and killed a few men. Both he and Napoleon were forced into fame by circumstances outside of themselves and by currents of the time, but Margaret Sanger made currents and circumstances. When the history of our civilization is written, it will be a biological history and Margaret Sanger will be its heroine.

I don't even know in American educational history classes how much of D-Day, World War II, all of that is taught versus how much of it is just ignored or looked back on with mockery or insincerity or what have you. But it was one of the most crucially important events in all of human history in terms of the preservation of freedom and liberty and the notion of democracy and things associated with it.

I talk about Africa and its meaning, being the birthplace of man and all that great history that's been erased and even hidden. I think it's my duty to be proud and to bring about the conversation that allows us to talk about the great history of my people.

I have a fairly unwieldy set of concerns that go into determining what I do in the paintings, such as the history of the decorative, patterns of cultural migration, Islamic art and design, Byzantine architecture, the annals of natural history, as well as contemporary painting. All of these things are filtered through my own sense of cultural urgency. How I proceed with the work has to do with how I respond to this instinctively chosen mass of materials. I'm weighing many things and making many decisions before I even get started on a painting.