Quotes on History

What you end up seeing when you look at history is that people who have been good at pushing the boundaries of possibility, and exploring those frontiers of good ideas and innovations, have rarely done it in moments of great inspiration. They don't just have a brilliant breakthrough idea out of nowhere and leap ahead of everyone else.

Films made by women belong to the history of cinema; it's just that we get erased pretty quickly.

I am speaking to you from the Cabinet Room at 10 Downing Street. This morning the British Ambassador in Berlin handed the German Government an official note stating that unless we heard from them by eleven o'clock, that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland, a state of war would exist between us. I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received, and consequently this country is at war with Germany.

Throughout history, people have studied pure science from a desire to understand the universe rather than practical applications for commercial gain. But their discoveries later turned out to have great practical benefits.

Throughout human history, people have developed strong loyalties to traditions, rituals, and symbols. In the most effective organizations, they are not only respected but celebrated. It is no coincidence that the most highly admired corporations are also among the most profitable.

As we have sought through the centuries to define ourselves as human beings and as nations through the prisms of history and literature, no small part of that effort has drawn us to the subject of war. We might even say that the humanities began with war and from war, and have remained entwined with it ever since.

Without history we are the prisoners of the accident of where and when we were born.

History is rife with examples of governments taking actions to 'protect' their citizens from harm by controlling access to information and inhibiting freedom of expression and other freedoms outlined in The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We must make sure, collectively, that the Internet avoids a similar fate.

The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.

The history of philosophy is actually full of people who argue for rather wild and incredible views, and their reputations are based on the skill of arguing for them.

The facts tell us that no religious Faith releases - or ever has released at any moment in History - a higher degree of warmth, a more intense dynamism of unification than the Christianity of our own day - and the more Catholic it is, the truer my words.

The modern tradition is the tradition of revolt. The French Revolution is still our model today: history is violent change, and this change goes by the name of progress. I do not know whether these notions really apply to art.

I'm interested in the origins of the religious experience, how the history of religion has evolved over the last umpteen thousand years, and where religiosity is going in the future. I think that's a topic I've been chewing on for a few years; I would love to eventually work on and produce a book out of it.

Dorado Beach's rich history provided amazing inspiration to put forward a bold menu celebrating the legacy of the people and cuisine that shaped this unique destination and to push me to share some of my own stories.

Reality is a staircase going neither up nor down, we don't move; today is today, always is today.

I knew from history that war comes with frightening regularity, often fought over the same ground and similar causes as previous conflicts.

Greek myths, early Roman history, is configured around violence against women. And I think we need to get in there, get our hands dirty, face it, and see why and how it was.

The male clerk with his quill pen and copper-plate handwriting had gone for good. The female short-hand typist took his place. It was a decisive moment in women's emancipation.

The evils that arise to us from the structure of the material universe are neither trivial nor few, yet the history of political society sufficiently shows that man is, of all other beings, the most formidable enemy to man.

The Past: Our cradle, not our prison; there is danger as well as appeal in its glamour. The past is for inspiration, not imitation, for continuation, not repetition.

We have need of history in its entirety, not to fall back into it, but to see if we can escape from it.