3,643 History Quotes

If there is not the war, you don't get the great general; if there is not a great occasion, you don't get a great statesman; if Lincoln had lived in a time of peace, no one would have known his name.

As an astronomer in the true sense of the term, Sir John Herschel stood before all his contemporaries. Nay, he stood almost alone.

There, like the wind through woods in riot, Through him the gale of life blew high; The tree of man was never quiet: Then 'twas the Roman, now 'tis I.

I think that this is the first war in history that on the morrow the victors sued for peace and the vanquished called for unconditional surrender.

I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me. Now, at the end of three years struggle the nation's condition is not what either party, or any man devised, or expected. God alone can claim it. Whither it is tending seems plain. If God now wills the removal of a great wrong, and wills also that we of the North as well as you of the South, shall pay fairly for our complicity in that wrong, impartial history will find therein new cause to attest and revere the justice and goodness of God.

For the sake of historical truth I must verify that only the Greeks, of all the adversaries who confronted us, fought with bold courage and highest disregard of death.

I'm sure that Nero didn't set fire to Rome. It was the Christian-Bolsheviks who did that, just as the Commune set fire to Paris in 1871 and the Communists set fire to the Reichstag in 1932.

It is eastwards, only and always eastwards, that the veins of our race must expand. It is the direction which Nature herself has decreed for the expansion of the German peoples. (7th February 1945)

I ought to have seized the initiative in 1938 instead of allowing myself to be forced into war in 1939; for war was, in any case, unavoidable. However, you can hardly blame me if the British and the French accepted at Munich every demand I made of them! (14th February 1945)

I have been Europe's last hope. She proved incapable of refashioning herself by means of voluntary reform. She showed herself impervious to charm and persuasion. To take her I had to use violence. (26th February)

The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to permit the conquered Eastern peoples to have arms. History teaches that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by doing so.

Let us say in passing that since (philosophical) remedies are often worse than the malady, our age, in order to be cured of the Plato sickness, has swallowed such doses of a relativist, vaguely skeptical, lightly spiritualist and insipidly moralist medicine, that it is in the process of gently dying, in the small bed of its supposed democratic comfort.

I am not very impressed with theological arguments whatever they may be used to support. Such arguments have often been found unsatisfactory in the past. In the time of Galileo it was argued that the texts, 'And the sun stood still... and hasted not to go down about a whole day' (Joshua x. 13) and 'He laid the foundations of the earth, that it should not move at any time' (Psalm cv. 5) were an adequate refutation of the Copernican theory.

If the only significant history of human thought were to be written, it would have to be the history of its successive regrets and its impotences.

We owe a lot to the Indians, who taught us how to count, without which no worthwhile scientific discovery could have been made.

I have always had plenty of friends, and now at age sixty, I face four walls as a common prisoner.

What has been presented as Christianity during these nineteen centuries is only a beginning, full of mistakes, not full blown Christianity springing from the spirit of Jesus.

One truth stands firm. All that happens in world history rests on something spiritual. If the spiritual is strong, it creates world history. If it is weak, it suffers world history.

Adaptation to one's environment makes for a sort of survival; but after all, the supreme victory is only won by those who prove themselves of so much hardier stuff than the rest that no power on earth is able to destroy them. The people who have really made history are the martyrs.

The conscience of the world is so guilty that it always assumes that people who investigate heresies must be heretics; just as if a doctor who studies leprosy must be a leper. Indeed, it is only recently that science has been allowed to study anything without reproach.

It was my view that the catastrophe. . . . could have been avoided if Vasilevsky had taken the position he should have. He could have taken a different position. . . . but he didn't do that, and as a result, in my view, he had a hand in the destruction of thousands of Red Army fighters in the Kharkov campaign.

In a very real sense, the Constitution is our compact with history . . . [but] the Constitution can maintain that compact and serve as the lodestar of our political system only if its terms are binding on us. To the extent we depart from the document's language and rely instead on generalities that we see written between the lines, we rob the Constitution of its binding force and give free reign to the fashions and passions of the day.

Just to prove that even the silliest idea can be pursued to its illogical conclusion, Legal Realism spawned Critical Legal Studies.

How can we still speak of the salvation and reformation of Europe, when we have to ask Europe's destroyer for help?

I have the feeling that this Moscow Pact will at some time or other exact vengeance upon National Socialism.

Germany will regard the Jewish question as solved only after the very last Jew has left the greater German living space... Europe will have its Jewish question solved only after the very last Jew has left the continent.

Providence conceals itself in the details of human affairs, but becomes unveiled in the generalities of history.

There is a woman at the begining of all great things.

For us military men, it is impossible to forget.

We do not have the right to forget that reactionary imperialism exists and its forces actively operate in the world, that they encourage the arms race and that they try to restore the spirit of the Cold War.

The one thing we know about torture is that it was never designed in the first place to get at the actual truth of anything; it was designed in the darkest days of human history to produce false confessions in order to annihilate political and religious dissidents. And that is how it always works: it gets confessions regardless of their accuracy.

We stole their babes and mothers, chiefs and braves Although we held the whip, you knew we were The real slaves To alchemy, human alchemy.

'New York is what Rome used to be.' he told biographer Ray Coleman.

Monotheism was a terrible idea, leading directly to Lenin.

It may be that the Greeks had it easy, with their light and their mountains and their plains and their islands waiting around for tourists. It was easy for them to believe that man fit in rather well. This fittingness may have given them the idea that we are seemlier than other evidence suggests. The heads of Rameses II at Abu Simbel and, for that matter, the skyscrapers of New York, have another idea of man. So do the artifacts of Albert Speer. It is depressing to wonder whether the Greeks just happened to be lucky, and the dream they left us is a lie about ourselves.

Odyous of olde been comparisonis.

Paradise Lost (1667, 1674)

That would have made Quintilian stare and gasp.

Or call up him that left half told The story of Cambuscan bold.

The three towering geniuses of European culture, Shakespeare, Mozart and Leonardo da Vinci were not allowed to appear on the euro note as they might, in their separate ways, cause offense: Mozart because he was a 'womanizer,' Shakespeare because he wrote The Merchant of Venice, a play judged to be anti-Semitic, and Leonardo because he was reported to fancy boys. Now the euro note carries a picture of a rather dull bridge.

No man was more influential than John Muir in preserving the Sierra's integrity. If I were to choose a single Californian to occupy the Hall of Fame, it would be this tenacious Scot who became a Californian during the final forty-six years of his life. It was John Muir whose knowledge wedded to zeal led men and governments to establish the National Park Service. Yosemite and Sequoia in California, the Petrified forest and the Grand Canyon in Arizona, and the glacier wilderness of Alaska are what they are today largely because of this one man, in whom learning and love were co-equal. More than any other, he was the answer to that call which appears on the Courts Building in Sacramento: Give me men to match my mountains.

His countrymen owe him gratitude as the pioneer of our system of national parks. Out of the fight which he led for the better care of the Yosemite by the State of California grew the demand for the extension of the system. To this many persons and organizations contributed, but Muir's writings and enthusiasm were the chief forces that inspired the movement. All the other torches were lighted from his.

'This people draws its origin from Abraham, our father in faith The very people that received from God the commandment Thou shalt not kill itself experienced in a special measure what is meant by killing. It is not permissible for anyone to pass by this inscription with indifference.'

'We are now standing in the face of the greatest historical confrontation humanity has ever experienced. I do not think the wide circle of the American Society, or the wide circle of the Christian Community realise this fully. We are now facing the final confrontation between the Church and the antichurch, between the Gospel and the antigospel, between Christ and the antichrist. This confrontation lies within the plans of Divine Providence. It is, therefore, in God's Plan, and it must be a trial which the Church must take up, and face courageously.'

'God of our fathers, you chose Abraham and his descendants to bring your name to the nations: We are deeply saddened by the behavior of those who in the course of history have caused these children of yours to suffer, and, asking your forgiveness, we wish to commit ourselves to genuine brotherhood with the people of the covenant.'

'The twentieth century was the great century of Christian martyrs, and this is true both in the Catholic Church and in other Churches and ecclesial communities.'

'Could I forget that the event [Mehmet Ali Agca's assassination attempt] in St. Peter's Square took place on the day and at the hour when the first appearance of the Mother of Christ to the poor little pesants has been remembered for over sixty years at Fatima, Portugal? For in everything that happened to me on that very day, I felt that extraordinary motherly protection and care, which turned out to be stronger than the deadly bullet.'

The future naval officers, who live within these walls, will find in the career of the man whose life we this day celebrate, not merely a subject for admiration and respect, but an object lesson to be taken into their innermost hearts. . . . Every officer . . . should feel in each fiber of his being an eager desire to emulate the energy, the professional capacity, the indomitable determination and dauntless scorn of death which marked John Paul Jones above all his fellows.

If Elvis were alive today, I think he'd really understand happy hardcore.

(after playing 'Carnival of Damocles' by In Excelsis) - I'm not entirely sure Damocles was the kind of chap who went to Carnivals much, but that's the title of it.

This house will bear witness to his piety; this town, his birthplace, to his munificence; history to his patriotism; posterity to the depth and compass of his mind.

The individual has been allowed out of his socially constructed cage. That, at least, is the contemporary myth. What is not clear, however, is what that liberation has to do with the fulfullment of individualism. The lessons of history seem relatively clear. Societies on the rise are simple, unadorned and relatively uncompromising. Those on the decline are given to open-mindedness, self-indulgence and the baroque.

On June 22nd, [1633,] in the morning, in the great hall of the Convent of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva, Galileo was found guilty of holding a false doctrine. He went down on his knees and both abjured and condemned his own errors. He swore never to argue such doctrines again. It was thus definitely confirmed that the sun did rotate around the earth...Santa Maria Sopra Minerva. Saint Mary Over Minerva. Power over wisdom.

I would remind you...that Socrates was executed not for saying what things were or should be, but for seeking practical indications of where some reasonable approximation of truth might be. He was executed not for his megalomania or grandiose propositions or certitudes, but for stubbornly doubting the absolute truths of others.

But now, in this century of ideologies, the Gods and Destiny have been given new life. 'Miracles in the world are many,' Sophocles wrote in the fifth century BC. 'There is no greater miracle than man.' Suddenly, at the end of the twentieth century, we discover that no, after all, it isn't true. Historical inevitability is a greater miracle than man. As is the dialectic. As is the superiority of various groups according to blood type. As is the genius of an abstract mechanism called the market. As is the leadership of inanimate objects - called technology - which worker bees create and then, inevitably, are led by. These inevitabilities are great leaps backward into the arms of the Gods and Destiny.

I think the twentieth century should have taught us how 'civilisation' is the thinnest of veneers. I was reading something last year where a state torturer said it would only take him about two weeks to 'train' any one of us to willingly do the same job.

Gentle Paul, laie doune thy sweard For Peter of Westminster hath shaven thy beard.

With humanity's long proud history of standing firm against natural enemies, sometimes in the face of almost certain defeat and extinction, we would be cowardly and stupid to leave the field on the eve of our greatest potential victory.

While the founding fathers agonized over the question 'particle' or 'wave', de Broglie in 1925 proposed the obvious answer 'particle' and 'wave'. Is it not clear from the smallness of the scintillation on the screen that we have to do with a particle? And is it not clear, from the diffraction and interference patterns, that the motion of the particle is directed by a wave? De Broglie showed in detail how the motion of a particle, passing through just one of two holes in screen, could be influenced by waves propagating through both holes. And so influenced that the particle does not go where the waves cancel out, but is attracted to where they cooperate. This idea seems to me so natural and simple, to resolve the wave-particle dilemma in such a clear and ordinary way, that it is a great mystery to me that it was so generally ignored.

Mankind can hardly be too often reminded, that there was once a man named Socrates, between whom and the legal authorities and public opinion of his time, there took place a memorable collision. Born in an age and country abounding in individual greatness, this man has been handed down to us by those who best knew both him and the age, as the most virtuous man in it; while we know him as the head and prototype of all subsequent teachers of virtue... This acknowledged master of all the eminent thinkers who have since lived - whose fame, still growing after more than two thousand years, all but outweighs the whole remainder of the names which make his native city illustrious - was put to death by his countrymen, after a judicial conviction, for impiety and immorality. (p. 32)

The only other instance of judicial iniquity, the mention of which, after the condemnation of Socrates, would not be an anti-climax: the event which took place on Calvary rather more than eighteen hundred years ago. The man who left on the memory of those who witnessed his life and conversation, such an impression of his moral grandeur, that eighteen subsequent centuries have done homage to him as the Almighty in person, was ignominiously put to death, as what? As a blasphemer. Men did not merely mistake their benefactor; they mistook him for the exact contrary of what he was, and treated him as that prodigy of impiety, which they themselves are now held to be, for their treatment of him. (p. 33)

Penalties for opinion, or at least for its expression, still exist by law; and their enforcement is not, even in these times, so unexampled as to make it at all incredible that they may some day be revived in full force. (p. 38)

If civilisation has got the better of barbarism when barbarism had the world to itself, it is too much to profess to be afraid lest barbarism, after having been fairly got under, should revive and conquer civilisation. A civilisation that can thus succumb to its vanquished enemy, must first have become so degenerate, that neither its appointed priests and teachers, nor anybody else, has the capacity, or will take the trouble, to stand up for it. If this be so, the sooner such a civilisation receives notice to quit the better. It can only go on from bad to worse, until destroyed and regenerated (like the Western Empire) by energetic barbarians. (p. 114)

People are not aware how entirely, informer ages, the law of superior strength was the rule of life; how publicly and openly it was avowed, I do not say cynically or shamelessly - for these words imply a feeling that there was something in it to be ashamed of, and no such notion could find a place in the faculties of any person in those ages, except a philosopher or a saint.

God, at least in the West, is often represented as a man with a flowing beard and sandals... if the Net does have a god, he is probably Jon Postel, a man who matches that description to a T. Mr. Postel's claim to cyber-divinity, besides his appearance, is that he is the chairman and, in effect, the sole member of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, the organization that coordinates almost all Internet addresses.

Hitler: Denial is a powerful thing... I always thought I could stop any time I wanted. 'If I could just get Czechoslovakia, that'll be the end of it. I'll be happy then.' And then I'd get it and think, well geez, Poland's just up the road a piece and... you know the rest.

1300 BC: God gives Ten Commandments to Israelites, making them His Chosen People and granting them eternal protection under Divine Law. Nothing bad ever happens to Jews again.

30 AD: Death penalty debate heats up after controversial execution of alleged 'Son of God'.

Through most of colonial history, inhabitants of the 13 colonies were loyal subjects of the British crown - resourceful, dedicated and as the Third Duchess of Kent... was fond of saying, 'Some tea-drinking' motherfuckahs.' In fact, whenever the subject of the New World was mentioned, the Duchess could always be counted on for a wistful head-shake and a hearty 'Motherfuckahs love that motherfuckin' tea.'

But on what basis should the three branches of government be divided? It came down to two dueling ideas: Madison's proposal of an executive, judicial and legislative branch, and Georgia's Joseph Morton's proposal to dole out power according to, 'The presence, forbearance, rectictude and largeosity of one's 'Plums and Carrot'.' After much deliberation, it was decided Madison's proposal would be accepted, Morton only relenting after the Constitutional Convention agreed to proclaim him 'impressive.'

By far the most revolutionary aspect of this new position [of the presidency] would be who could hold it. The short answer: just about anyone. By placing no explicit race, gender, or religious requirements on the presidency, the Founders opened the door the a true meritocracy. Why no women, blacks, or non-Christians have answered the founders' challenge is a mystery, though most indications point to some inherent genetic flaw. (William Howard Taft came closest, having what most observers agreed were boobs.)

What was God thinking in putting all his holy sites in one area? Like two blocks from each other. Is the idea for God ... He just put it in there like, 'I just want to see who wants it more.'

Arrasado el jardin, profanados los calices y las aras, entraron a caballo los hunos en la biblioteca monastica y rompieron los libros incomprensibles y los vituperaron y los quemaron, acaso temerosos de que las letras encubrieran blasfemias contra su dios, que era una cimitarra de hierro.

That history should have imitated history was already sufficiently marvellous; that history should imitate literature is inconceivable....

'Wakefield' prefigures Franz Kafka, but the latter modifies, and sharpens, the reading of 'Wakefield.' The debt is mutual; a great writer creates his or her precursors. He or she creates them and in some fashion justifies them.

On September 20, 1792, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (who had accompanied the Duke of Weimar on a military expedition to Paris) saw the finest army of Europe inexplicably repulsed at Valmy by some French militiamen, and said to his disconcerted friends: 'In this place and on this day, a new epoch in the history of the world is beginning, and we shall be able to say that we have been present at its origin.' Since that time historic days have been numerous, and one of the tasks of governments (especially in Italy, Germany, and Russia) has been to fabricate them or to simulate them with an abundance of preconditioning propaganda followed by relentless publicity.

I have suspected that history, real history, is more modest and that its essential dates may be, for a long time, secret. A Chinese prose writer has observed that the unicorn, because of its own anomaly, will pass unnoticed. Our eyes see what they are accustomed to seeing. Tacitus did not perceive the Crucifixion, although his book recorded it.

Only one thing is more admirable than the admirable reply of the Saxon king: that an Icelander, a man of the lineage of the vanquished, has perpetuated the reply. It is as if a Carthaginian had bequeathed to us the memory of the exploit of Regulus. Saxo Grammaticus wrote with justification in his Gesta Danorum: 'The men of Thule [Iceland] are very fond of learning and of recording the history of all peoples and they are equally pleased to reveal the excellences of others or of themselves.' Not the day when the Saxon said the words, but the day when an enemy perpetuated them, was the historic date. A date that is a prophecy of something still in the future: the day when races and nations will be cast into oblivion, and the solidarity of all mankind will be established.

This was the first time Remington rifles were used in the Argentine, and it tickles my fancy to think that the firm that shaves me every morning bears the same name as the one that killed my grandfather.

Some Reminiscences (A Personal Record) (1912)

'It is more than a crime; it is a political fault,' -words which I record, because they have been repeated and attributed to others.

Berndt reicht mir eine Ausarbeitung uber die von uns zu betreibende okkultistische Propaganda ein. Hier wird in der Tat Einiges geleistet. Die Amerikaner und Englander fallen ja vorzuglich auf eine solche Art von Propaganda herein. Wir nehmen alle irgendwie zur Verfugung stehenden Kronzeugen der okkulten Weissagung als Mithelfer in Anspruch. Nostradamus mu? wieder einmal daran glauben.

Goebbels must have had a tremendous hatred for the Jews - but not more than Himmler. I have no doubt, at this date, that Goebbels knew of the murder of 5 million Jews, a fact which he kept hidden from me and others at that time.

Did I ever tell you about Goebbels? He incurred Hitler's disapproval after that incident with the movie actress for which he was beaten up. That clubfooted fanatic! He forced women to submit to him sexually because of his powerful position. He influenced Hitler to become anti-Semitic more than Hitler had been before. Hitler used to come to my house once in a while for a cup of coffee, and because I led a normal life, he would leave about nine o'clock. I was in the habit of retiring early. However, Hitler used to spend practically all of his nights, sometimes until four a.m., with Goebbels and his family. God knows what evil influence Goebbels had on him during those long visits.

Didn't I once observe that there is nothing new under the sun?

'The truth is whatever people will believe is the truth. Don't you know history?'

Apparently, father was a Georgian when he was younger.

The scene shall never fit the deed. Grotesquely wonders come to pass. The fool shall mount an Arab steed And Jesus ride upon an ass.

When you say of the making of ballads and songs that it is woman's work You forget all the fighting poets that have been in every land.

I had imagined that the prelates of the Galilaeans were under greater obligations to me than to my predecessor. For in his reign many of them were banished, persecuted, and imprisoned, and many of the so-called heretics were executed ... all of this has been reversed in my reign; the banished are allowed to return, and confiscated goods have been returned to the owners. But such is their folly and madness that, just because they can no longer be despots, ... or carry out their designs first against their brethren, and then against us, the worshippers of the gods, they are inflamed with fury and stop at nothing in their unprincipled attempts to alarm and enrage the people.

Panegyric upon Julian by Libanius, who knew him well and admired him.

'Well, if he's dead, I'm gonna have to act EXTRA sexy so I can get a new boyfriend. You can't doodle with a dead noodle, know what I'm sayin'? (Sees book cover.) Oh my GOD. That's what Shakespeare looked like? I'm not doing this.'