1,795 quotes found
“History's a bitch when you're in the middle of it.”
“History doesn't remember gardens.You forgot the wise administrators, those who kept the peace, those who brought prosperity. You neednt feel embarrassed, though. So did history.”
“Tell me, before you call us servants, who served whom? And who, I wonder, in your generations, will immortalize you?”
“And in that history you're trying to connect to something that once was yours - to something purer, better, something that you lost or something, maybe, that you never knew but that you feel you knew.”
“History is an angel being blown backwards into the future”
“They never let you live it down. One little mistake!"- Nero”
“A man who don't know history, he don't know anything.”
“Today, I don't believe in destiny. But I do believe in history...There's nothing more powerful than history...”
“Their lives were precarious and they knew it. They were trying their best to fit themselves into a country which would never quite accept them, and to make themselves acceptable in a part of the wo...”
“The ages live in history through their anachronisms.”
“Youth is terrible: it is a stage trod by children in buskins and a variety of costumes mouthing speeches they've memorized and fanatically believe but only half understand. And history is terrible ...”
“While Leonidas was preparing to make his stand, a Persian envoy arrived. The envoy explained to Leonidas the futility of trying to resist the advance of the Great King's army and demanded that the ...”
“War is sometimes described as long periods of boredom punctuated by short moments of excitement. History is often similar, if rather safer.”
“Most cowgirls are natural storytellers, their art honed by years of practice. . . . It serves as entertainment; it also preserves the humor and value of a unique way of life.”
“In five hundred years' time, to the historian writing the Decline and Fall of the British Empire, this little episode would not exist. There will be plenty of other causes. You and me and poor Jone...”
“A memoir provides a record not so much of the memoirist as of the memoirist's world.”
“History's got no bows on it, only frayed ends of ribbons and knots that can't be untied.”
“That was the nature of history, of course: notional, partial, unknowable, a record made by the victors.”
“The trouble is, we are incurable sentimentalists. We insist on makin over historical characters to suit our preconceived notions of what they should be, chipping, sandpapering, and polishing each p...”
“Some people like danger and adventure, some like to be free of civilization, and some like to live by their wits. It was those special people who headed west.”
