Social History Quotes

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  Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.

  Margaret Mead

  Inspirational, Life, Friendship

  Margaret Mead, Robert B. Textor (2005). “The World Ahead: An Anthropologist Anticipates the Future”, p.12, Berghahn Books

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• Much of the social history of the Western world, over the past three decades, has been a history of replacing what worked with what sounded good.

  Thomas Sowell

  Past, Gdp, Liberty

  Thomas Sowell (1993). “Is Reality Optional?: And Other Essays”, Hoover Inst Press

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• Political and social history are in my view two aspects of the same process. Social life loses half its interest and political movements lose most of their meaning if they are considered separately.

  F. M. Powicke

  Views, Two, History

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• Social history might be defined negatively as the history of a people with the politics left out

  G. M. Trevelyan

  People, Politics, Might

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• We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal.

  Elizabeth Cady Stanton

  Inspiring, Women, 4th Of July

  Declaration of Sentiments, First Woman's Rights

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• I am America. I am the part you won't recognize. But get used to me. Black, confident, cocky; my name, not yours; my religion, not yours; my goals, my own; get used to me.

  Muhammad Ali

  Cocky, Greatness, Names

  Muhammad Ali (2016). “Muhammad Ali Unfiltered: Rare, Iconic, and Officially Authorized Photos of the Greatest”, p.88, Simon and Schuster

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• I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy.

  John Adams

  Education, Philosophy, War

  John Adams (2003). “The Letters of John and Abigail Adams”, p.264, Penguin

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• The way people really think is not adequately analyzed by the universal categories of logic. Between social history and formal analyses of thought there is a path, a lane - maybe very narrow - which is the path of the historian of thought.

  Michel Foucault

  Thinking, People, Way

  Source: www.nicklewis.org

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• Pirate historians have now discovered social history, the branch of history which in the last two decades or so has been the most dynamic and inventive, in both senses of the word.

  Peter Earle

  Two, Pirate, Branches

  Peter Earle (2013). “The Pirate Wars”, p.4, Macmillan

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• All other forms of history - economic history, social history, psychological history, above all sociology - seem to me history with the history left out.

  A. J. P. Taylor

  History, Psychological, Sociology

  The A J P Taylor (1980). “Politicians, Socialism, and Historians”, H. Hamilton

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• Once we begin to speak of men mixing their labour with the earth, we are in a whole world of new relations between man and nature, and to separate natural history from social history becomes extremely problematic.

  Raymond Williams

  Men, Mixing, World

  Raymond Williams (2005). “Culture and Materialism: Selected Essays”, p.76, Verso

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• I read a lot of social history. If I'm in an art gallery and a picture intrigues me, I immediately write down the title and I google it. I do a lot of googling and looking out for good stories. I can almost smell them sometimes.

  Emma Donoghue

  Art, Writing, Smell

  "The Keeper of Room". Interview with Emma Brown, www.interviewmagazine.com. October 15, 2015.

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• Man has traditionally ruled the social sphere; feminism tells him to move over and share his power. But woman rules the sexual and emotional sphere, and there she has no rival. Victim ideology, a caricature of social history, blocks women from recognition of their dominance in the deepest, most important realm. ?

  Camille Paglia

  Block, Moving, Men

  Camille Paglia (2011). “Vamps & Tramps: New Essays”, p.31, Vintage

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• Crime fiction is the fiction of social history. Societies get the crimes they deserve.

  Denise Mina

  Fiction, Crime, Social

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• Planned parenthood" in the social history of the Western countries is, indeed, a phenomenon instrin-sically related to those very changes in peoples attitudes which, on the political plane, have been causing the trend towards economic planning.

  Gunnar Myrdal

  Country, Attitude, Parent

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• Witches is being sold as an account of the Belvoir scandals, but in truth, Tracy Borman has written a thorough and beautifully researched social history of the early 1600s, taking in everything from folk medicine to James I's sex life.

  Bella Bathurst

  Sex, Medicine, Scandal

  "Witches: A Tale of Sorcery, Scandal and Seduction by Tracy Borman - review" by Bella Bathurst, www.theguardian.com. August 25, 2013.

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• It's a shame for women's history to be all about men--first boys, then other boys, then men men men. It reminds me of the way our school history textbooks were all about wars and elections, one war after another, with the dull periods of peace skimmed over whenever they occurred. (Our teachers deplored this and added extra units about social history and protest movements, but that was still the message of the books.)

  Elizabeth Kostova

  Teacher, War, Book

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• 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.

  Herbert Muschamp

  Memories, Cities, History

  "The Secret History of 2 Columbus Circle" by Herbert Muschamp, www.nytimes.com. January 8, 2006.

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• Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good. In area after area - crime, education, housing, race relations - the situation has gotten worse after the bright new theories were put into operation. The amazing thing is that this history of failure and disaster has neither discouraged the social engineers nor discredited them.

  Thomas Sowell

  Past, Race, Three

  "Is Reality Optional?". Book by Thomas Sowell, November 22, 1993.

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• Nightclub City tells the behind-the-scenes story of Manhattan's glamorous nightlife at its peak. Packed with colorful characters, terrific original research, and an unusually accessible writing style, Nightclub City is a gritty social history of America's most glitzy fantasies.

  Debby Applegate

  Writing, Character, Nightlife

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