Historical Quotes - Page 7

• Most of the great results of history are brought about by discreditable means.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Mean, Results, Great Results

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Barbara L. Packer, Joseph Slater, Douglas Emory Wilson (2003). “The Conduct of Life”, p.136, Harvard University Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is long ere we discover how rich we are. Our history, we are sure, is quite tame: we have nothing to write, nothing to infer. But our wiser years still run back to the despised recollections of childhood. . . .

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Running, Writing, Years

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2009). “The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.267, Modern Library

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Careless of waste, wallowing in refuse, exterminating the enemies . . . despising age, denying human natural history, fabricating pseudotraditions, swamped in the repeated personal crises of the aging preadolescent; all are familiar images of American society. They are signs of private nightmares of incoherence and disorder in broken climaxes where technologies in pursuit of mastery create ever-worsening problems - private nightmares expanded to a social level.

  Paul Shepard

  Technology, Broken, Enemy

  12 Copy quote

• Learning history is easy; learning its lessons seems almost impossibly difficult.

  Nicolas Bentley

  Learning, Lessons, Easy

  Nicolas Bentley (1959). “A Choice of Ornaments”

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• The more that one studies the history of the building of the American nation, the clearer it becomes that it may be justly described as a laboratory experiment in understanding and in solving the world problems of tomorrow.

  Nicholas Murray Butler

  America, Understanding, World

  "The Age of the Americas: An Address Delivered at the Parrish Memorial Art Museum, Southampton, Long Island, September 6, 1942".

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is one of the great ironies of human history that some mortals with incorrect understanding of God and life's purposes sometimes scold God because of the abundance of human misery and suffering-which, indeed, lies all about us. Such individuals almost dare God to demonstrate His existence by straightening things out-and at once! But He is a much different kind of Father than that. Surely it is requisite to eternal life that we come to know God and Jesus Christ whom He has sent (see John 17:3).

  Neal A. Maxwell

  Jesus, Father, Lying

  4 Copy quote

• It is one of the ironies of religious history that many mortals err in their understanding of the nature of God and end up rejecting not the real God but their own erroneous and stereotypical image of God. Frequently this is because they have thought of God solely in terms of thunderings at Sinai without pondering substance. . . .

  Neal A. Maxwell

  Religious, Real, Understanding

  15 Copy quote

• The prophet is appointed to oppose the kind, and even more: history.

  Martin Buber

  Kindness, Kind, Prophet

  4 Copy quote

• There is a moment in the history of every nation, when . . . the perceptive powers reach their ripeness and have not yet become microscopic: so that man, at that instant . . . with his feet still planted on the immense forces of night, converses by his eyes and brain with solar and stellar creation.

  Marsilio Ficino

  Eye, Night, Men

  11 Copy quote

• And always we had wars, and more wars, and still other wars - all over Europe, all over the world. "Sometimes in the private interest of royal families," Satan said, "sometimes to crush a weak nation; but never a war started by the aggressor for any clean purpose - there is no such war in the history of the race."

  Mark Twain

  Crush, War, Race

  Mark Twain (2014). “The Mysterious Stranger: and Other Stories”, p.143, Diderot Publishing

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The scale of marital breakdowns in the West since 1960 has no historical precedent that I know of, and seems unique, . . . There has been nothing like it for the last 2,000 years, and probably longer.

  Lawrence Stone

  Unique, Years, Lasts

  7 Copy quote

• After attending a banquet honoring the 1974 BYU team that won the Western AthleticConference and went to the Fiesta Bowl. It was the first of Edwards' 18 WAC champions and 21 bowl teams. That was the group of kids that totally changed the direction of my life and the direction of our football program. We started 0-3-1 and won seven or eight in a row. They were the first bowl team in school history. I hadn't really accomplished anything yet. To see all those guys reminded me where we've been. It was an emotional night.

  LaVell Edwards

  Football, Team, School

  13 Copy quote

• Any movement in history which attempts to perpetuate itself, becomes reactionary.

  Josip Broz Tito

  Movement, Reactionaries

  134 Copy quote

• There is not a truth to be gathered from history more certain, or more momentous, than this: that civil liberty cannot long be separated from religious liberty without danger, and ultimately without destruction to both. Wherever religious liberty exists, it will, first or last, bring in and establish political liberty.

  Joseph Story

  Religious, Truth, Long

  Joseph Story (1852). “The miscellaneous writings of Joseph Story ... ed. by his son, William W. Story”, p.441

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• History shows that great economic and social forces flow like a tide over communities only half conscious of that which is befalling them. Wise statesmen foresee what time is thus bringing, and try to shape institutions and mold men's thoughts and purposes in accordance with the change that is silently coming on. The unwise are those who bring nothing constructive to the process, and who greatly imperil the future of mankind by leaving great questions to be fought out between ignorant change on one hand and ignorant opposition to change on the other.

  John Stuart Mill

  Wise, Men, Hands

  16 Copy quote

• I like you and your book, ingenious Hone! In whose capacious all-embracing leaves The very marrow of tradition 's shown; And all that history, much that fiction weaves.

  Charles Lamb

  I Like You, Book, Fiction

  Samuel Rogers, Thomas Campbell, James Montgomery, Charles Lamb, Henry Kirke White (1836). “The Poetical Works of Rogers, Campbell, J. Montombery, Lamb, and Kirke White: Complete in One Volume”, p.413

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Great steps in human progress are made by things that don't work the way philosophy thought they should. If things always worked the way they should, you could write the history of the world from now on. But they don't, and it is those deviations from the normal that make human progress.

  Charles Kettering

  Philosophy, Writing, Science

  5 Copy quote

• On the eve of this great adventure I send my best wishes to every soldier in the Allied team.
  To us is given the honour of striking a blow for freedom which will live in history; and in the better days that lie ahead men will speak with pride of our doings.

  Bernard Law Montgomery

  Lying, Pride, Men

  Personal message to troops of 21st Army Group on the eve of D-Day,

  79 Copy quote

  Show source

• History abhors determinism but cannot tolerate chance.

  Bernard DeVoto

  Art, Philosophy, History

  14 Copy quote

• If the history of England be ever written by one who has the knowledge and the courage,-and both qualities are equally requisite for the undertaking, - the world will be more astonished than when reading the Roman annals by Niebuhr.

  Benjamin Disraeli

  Reading, Knowledge, Quality

  Benjamin Disraeli (1845). “Sybil, Or, The Two Nations”, p.17

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• In the index to the six hundred odd pages of Arnold Toynbee's A Study of History, abridged version, the names of Copernicus, Galileo, Descartes and Newton do not occur yet their cosmic quest destroyed the medieval vision of an immutable social order in a walled-in universe and transformed the European landscape, society, culture, habits and general outlook, as thoroughly as if a new species had arisen on this planet.

  Arthur Koestler

  Order, Names, Vision

  4 Copy quote

• For this reason poetry is something more philosophical and more worthy of serious attention than history.

  Aristotle

  Philosophical, Serious, Attention

  'Poetics' ch. 9, 1451b

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Pornographers are the enemies of women only because our contemporary ideology of pornography does not encompass the possibility of change, as if we were the slaves of history and not its makers. . . . Pornography is a satire on human pretensions.

  Angela Carter

  Change, Enemy, Doe

  15 Copy quote

• In the course of history, all empires have been created with premeditation, by an effort often sustained over several generations. Every power has been Roman to a degree. The United States is the first nation to become the most powerful in the world without having sought to be so. Its exceptional energy and organization have never been oriented toward conquest.

  Andre Malraux

  Powerful, Organization, Effort

  6 Copy quote

• ZOOLOGY, n. The science and history of the animal kingdom, including its king, the House Fly ("Musca maledicta"). The father of Zoology was Aristotle, as is universally conceded, but the name of its mother has not come down to us.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Mother, Kings, Father

  Ambrose Bierce (2011). “Ambrose Bierce: The Devil's Dictionary, Tales, and Memoirs: The Devil's Dictionary, Tales, and Memoirs”, p.843, Library of America

  68 Copy quote

  Show source