Explore Quotes on History

And thus goes segregation which is the most far-reaching development in the history of the Negro since the enslavement of the race.

Those who have no record of what their forebears have accomplished lose the inspiration which comes from the teaching of biography and history.

If a race has no history, if it has no worthwhile tradition, it becomes a negligible factor in the thought of the world, and it stands in danger of being exterminated.

In a sense, words are encyclopedias of ignorance because they freeze perceptions at one moment in history and then insist we continue to use these frozen perceptions when we should be doing better.

Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.

The man who is swimming against the stream knows the strength of it.

Don't look forward to the day you stop suffering, because when it comes you'll know you're dead.

The future has a way of arriving unannounced.

If you seek Hamilton's monument, look around. You are living in it. We honor Jefferson, but live in Hamilton's country, a mighty industrial nation with a strong central government.

World War II was the last government program that really worked.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written.

I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.

To have great poets, there must be great audiences.

What is history but a fable agreed upon?

Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever.

History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon.

History is a set of lies agreed upon.

Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.

n Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.

Imagination is always the fabric of social life and the dynamic of history. The influence of real needs and compulsions, of real interests and materials, is indirect because the crowd is never conscious of it.

The cost of liberty is less than the price of repression.