Quotes on History

As long as mankind shall continue to bestow more liberal applause on their destroyers than on their benefactors, the thirst of military glory will ever be the vice of the most exalted characters.

History employs evolution to structure biological events in time.

An extra-terrestrial philosopher, who had watched a single youth up to the age of twenty-one and had never come across any other human being, might conclude that it is the nature of human beings to grow continually taller and wiser in an indefinite progress towards perfection; and this generalization would be just as well founded as the generalization which evolutionists base upon the previous history of this planet.

The older I get the more I'm convinced that it's the purpose of politicians and journalists to say the world is very simple, whereas it's the purpose of historians to say, 'No! It's very complicated.' _x000D_ _x000D_ The job of the historian is to help give people a sense of existence in time, without which we are really not fully human.

History is Philosophy teaching by example.

A building does not have to be an important work of architecture to become a first-rate landmark. Landmarks are not created by architects. They are fashioned by those who encounter them after they are built. The essential feature of a landmark is not its design, but the place it holds in a city's memory. Compared to the place it occupies in social history, a landmark's artistic qualities are incidental.

Happiness is not the end of life: character is.

History is the present. That's why every generation writes it anew. But what most people think of as history is its end product, myth.

Poetry is not the proper antithesis to prose, but to science. Poetry is opposed to science, and prose to meter. The proper and immediate object of science is the acquirement, or communication of truth; the proper and immediate object of poetry is the communication of immediate pleasure.

Peace is more precious than a piece of land.

Art may make a suite of clothes, but nature must produce a man.

What is our policy? ... to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime.

We have known the bitterness of defeat and the exultation of triumph, and from both we have learned there can be no turning back. We must go forward to preserve in peace what we won in war.

In popular government results worth while can only be achieved by men who combine worthy ideals with practical good sense.

We know that enduring peace cannot be bought at the cost of other people's freedom.

The nation behaves well if it treats the natural resources as assets which it must turn over to the next generation increased; and not impaired in value.

We must be the great arsenal of Democracy.

Today it is fashionable to talk about the poor. Unfortunately, it is not fashionable to talk with them.

Kinship among nations is not determined in such measurements as proximity of size and age. Rather we should turn to those inner things - call them what you will - I mean those intangibles that are the real treasures free men possess.

Only those are fit to live who do not fear to die and none are fit to die who have shrunk from the joy of life and the duty of life.

Courage, hard work, self-mastery, and intelligent effort are all essential to successful life.