Historical Quotes

I stood still, vision blurring, and in that moment, I heard my heart break. It was a small, clean sound, like the snapping of a flower's stem.

Fantasy. Lunacy. All revolutions are, until they happen, then they are historical inevitabilities.

Historically, the most terrible things - war, genocide, and slavery - have resulted not from disobedience, but from obedience.

The sunset bled into the edges of the village. Smoke curled out of the cottage chimney like a crooked finger.

Hegel remarks somewhere that all great, world-historical facts and personages occur, as it were, twice. He has forgotten to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.

One life is all we have and we live it as we believe in living it. But to sacrifice what you are and to live without belief, that is a fate more terrible than dying.

There is no law that gods must be fair, Achilles,” Chiron said. “And perhaps it is the greater grief, after all, to be left on earth when another is gone. Do you think?

We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

Gossip is like thread wound over a spindle of truth, changing its shape.

Every ounce of my cynicism is supported by historical precedent.

If one does not react to gossip, the informer hushes more quickly.

This world would be a pleasant place if people didn’t inhabit it.

The Bible did not arrive by fax from heaven. The Bible is the product of man, my dear. Not of God. The Bible did not fall magically from the clouds. Man created it as a historical record of tumultuous times, and it has evolved through countless translations, additions, and revisions. History has never had a definitive version of the book.

The early women rise before I do. Their lamps splinter the gloom of the kitchens. They chatter in whispers as they brew tea for the cooks. Windows are open to counter the heat of the ovens. Outside, the sky is as black as my soul.

  “I am running back my tent to get my sub-machinegun. There are too many Noggies to kill using a pistol!” He then ran to where his scrape was and returned with the weapon.

My bursting heart must find vent at my pen.

We have advantages. We have a cushion to fall back on. This is abundance. A luxury of place and time. Something rare and wonderful. It's almost historically unprecedented. We must do extraordinary things. We have to. It would be absurd not to.

It is an historical fact that you and I have a problem doing the right thing, for others and for ourselves. Yet, we deny it fiercely or wallow in shame, neither of which God wants for us.

Looking over the Ethan's bowed head, amidst the tangled forest of Wilderness littered with the bodies of men dead and dying, Victor saw the serene image of his mother.  She smiled at her son, her unbound black hair blowing wildly in the breeze.  She reached a hand out towards him, and this time, he went with her.

Temples are for the gods,” Thucydides said. “No city has the hubris to put her own citizens on a temple.” Phidias promised, “The Athenians will look like gods.

I want to fill every part of you, breathe the air from your lungs and leave my handprints on your soul. I want to give you more pleasure than you can bear.

Do you know the song Violet Crowned Athens?” he asked. Yellow hair like hers was rare among the Greeks. Though some people say that Helen of Troy . . .

It had happened. Thucydides, his archrival, was a general. Glaucon, from his own tribe, was a general. And Pericles was no longer a general. He was just a citizen with one vote. And an idea

Good men are often more practical than pretty " said Mother. "Andrius just happens to be both.

Oscar looked up from his plate, and if a cat could laugh, he would have. ‘Boy, that’s ugly, even for a jinn. Looks like a cross between a rat, a frog and a bottlebrush.

The summer sun bowing out threw slashes of colour between the buildings. London looked big, empty, and lonely. She stood in the doorway, like a cat trying to make up its mind.

She must feel like Lucifer’s frigid breath is running down the back of her delicate neck.

You sound like you’re enjoying my suffering.

Her growing possessiveness felt both good and bad.

Historically inaccurate.' Adrian gestured at me with his other hand, the one not on my shoulder. "Who the hell looks at you and says 'historically inaccurate'?

The verdict got both the fish and me off the hook.

I watched her undress with moonlight shivering across the room from behind sheer curtains that moved with the currents from the hearth fire.

I knew I rode a rugged crest of turmoil that might crash on the rocky shore of irrational behavior.

What the hell, if you are going to roll the dice with Lucifer, I say go the distance.

Then wake up my sweet,  wake up knowing that your future is to be happy, and that your heart will heal.

Death rides on all of our shoulders from the day we are born.

I swallowed a sigh since, truthfully, I was glad she found the cabin.

The final sound of the rifle shot bounced around the lake.

It was as if we played chess after denying me both bishops and knights.

A hedgehog? And just how does a hedgehog make love?" he demanded. No, I thought. I won't. I will not. But I did. "Very carefully," I replied, giggling helplessly. So now we know just how old that one is, I thought.

The steps leading to the porch looked worn, cracked, and unpainted, ready for a nice hot fire.

Death is the ultimate test of faith.

In our twenties, when there is still so much time ahead of us, time that seems ample for a hundred indecisions, for a hundred visions and revisions—we draw a card, and we must decide right then and there whether to keep that card and discard the next, or discard the first card and keep the second. And before we know it, the deck has been played out and the decisions we have just made will shape our lives for decades to come.

All knowledge that is about human society, and not about the natural world, is historical knowledge, and therefore rests upon judgment and interpretation. This is not to say that facts or data are nonexistent, but that facts get their importance from what is made of them in interpretation… for interpretations depend very much on who the interpreter is, who he or she is addressing, what his or her purpose is, at what historical moment the interpretation takes place.

At some point in our lifetime, gay marriage won't be an issue, and everyone who stood against this civil right will look as outdated as George Wallace standing on the school steps keeping James Hood from entering the University of Alabama because he was black.

A look of absolute terror locked onto her features.

And she was right. No matter how they tried, the two humans, with the cat but without the microchip, couldn’t connect to headquarters. Raya heard a loud popping sound in her mind, like a huge rubber band being snapped, like a glider plane released from a Piper Cub.

If you can walk with the crowd and keep your virtue, or walk with Kings-nor lose the common touch; If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you; If all men count with you, but none too much; If you can fill the unforgiving minute with 60 seconds worth of distance run- Yours is the earth and everything that's in it, And-which is more-you'll be a man my son.

This evening I spied her in the back orchard. I decided to sacrifice one of my better old shirts and carried it out to her. The weather’s been warm of late. Buds on the apple trees are ready to burst. Usually by this time of the year, at that time of day, the back orchard is full of screaming children. Damut’s boys were the only two. They were on the terrace below her, running through the slanted sunlight, chasing each other around tree trunks. She stood above them, like a merlin watching rabbits play.

Patience is only a virtue when there is something worth waiting for.

To see the years touch ye gives me joy", he whispered, "for it means that ye live.

I must make up my mind which is right – society or I.

Books are keys that open many doors.

Love's stories written in love's richest books. To fan the moonbeams from his sleeping eyes.

Demoralize the enemy from within by surprise, terror, sabotage, assassination. This is the war of the future.

If we wish to know about a man, we ask 'what is his story--his real, inmost story?'--for each of us is a biography, a story. Each of us is a singular narrative, which is constructed, continually, unconsciously, by, through, and in us--through our perceptions, our feelings, our thoughts, our actions; and, not least, our discourse, our spoken narrations. Biologically, physiologically, we are not so different from each other; historically, as narratives--we are each of us unique.

Some ghosts are so quiet you would hardly know they were there.

Lying on the floor, with the carved panels of the ceiling flickering dimly above, I found myself thinking that I had always heretofore assumed that the tendency of eigh­teenth-century ladies to swoon was due to tight stays; now I rather thought it might be due to the idiocy of eighteenth-century men.

If I die," he whispered in the dark, "dinna follow me. The bairns will need ye. Stay for them. I can wait.

What is the cause of historical events? Power. What is power? Power is the sum total of wills transferred to one person. On what condition are the willso fo the masses transferred to one person? On condition that the person express the will of the whole people. That is, power is power. That is, power is a word the meaning of which we do not understand.

I'm afraid!" She cried breaking free from his embrace. But this time, he refused to let her go.  "No, no, no, you're not afraid of me!  What am I...a foot and half taller than you and out weigh you by 130 pounds, how could you possibly be afraid of me!" He laughed.

He turned and smiled resolvedly at her.  He knew no one else would ever understand that for Arvellen, sex only had to do with friendship and of pleasing one another, and nothing at all to do with what she considered to be the silly confines of love or marriage.

Only someone watching him closely like Celena would have noticed his intense preoccupation, and that something in a split second had happened to him.  She wondered where he had gone when he should have been listening to the sermon, where his soul had gone went it had left his body.

The book was turned to the page with Anne Frank's name, but what got me about it was the fact that right beneath her name there were four Aron Franks. FOUR. Four Aron Franks without museums, without historical markers, without anyone to mourn them. I silently resolved to remember and pray for the four Aron Franks as long as I was around.

You are there and to their ears, being a Syrian sounds like you’re unclean, shameful, indecent; it’s like you owe the world an apology for your very existence.

Anybody can make history; only a great man can write it.

Is," "is," "is"—the idiocy of the word haunts me. If it were abolished, human thought might begin to make sense. I don't know what anything "is"; I only know how it seems to me at this moment.

Creativity is closely associated with bipolar disorder. This condition is unique . Many famous historical figures and artists have had this. Yet they have led a full life and contributed so much to the society and world at large. See, you have a gift. People with bipolar disorder are very very sensitive. Much more than ordinary people. They are able to experience emotions in a very deep and intense way. It gives them a very different perspective of the world. It is not that they lose touch with reality. But the feelings of extreme intensity are manifested in creative things. They pour their emotions into either writing or whatever field they have chosen" (pg 181)

How did I become President? I began by setting an example, hanging out my own dirty laundry in front of Village Earth right from the start. Every ugly little life secret became a matter of public record. Of course, that included sordid love-life details.

A haunting memory flooded over Ethan when his own little sister had died. He had not thought of her in years! He glanced at the other chairs that sat empty around the table and wondered how different, or better his life would have been if she had lived. He tried to imagine her sitting there, but had trouble conjuring up her face.

How many times can a heart be shattered and still be pieced back together? How many times before the damage is irreparable?

Historical fact: People stopped being people in 1913. That was the year Henry Ford put his cars on rollers and made his workers adopt the speed of the assembly line. At first, workers rebelled. They quit in droves, unable to accustom their bodies to the new pace of the age. Since then, however, the adaptation has been passed down: we've all inherited it to some degree, so that we plug right into joy-sticks and remotes, to repetitive motions of a hundred kinds.

It touched me to be trusted with something terrible.

Naughty John, Naughty John, does his work with his apron on. Cuts your throat and takes your bones, sells 'em off for a coupla stones.

You may be a bit presumptuous, Miss Woodhart, and may lack certain habits of good etiquette. But in dancing, you exceed many—and in loveliness, I have known no equal.

He kissed her. Without warning, without permission. Without even deciding to do it, but simply because he couldn't have done anything else. He needed that breath she was holding. It belonged to him, and he wanted it back.

I am not an atheist preacher. I am not an absolutist or chauvinist whose ways are immune to evolution. My core philosophy is that I might be wrong.

The old law of an eye for an eye didn’t make them blind to the fact that another man’s terrorist wasn’t their freedom fighter.

I felt hot under my Mutton sleeves. "I just wish he'd have the decency to say whatever he came to say in front of his wife." "Perhaps his wife is busy today." "She shouldn't be." His wife should track him like a bloodhound.

She is an able negotiator and a strong ally." Pickering said, as his eyes caressed her lovely face.  He noticed both her arms were wrapped tightly around Victor's, and that she looked up at him with such commitment that it made his cynical view of love soften.  Reminding him bittersweetly of how he had felt once, a very long time ago.

Instruction in world history in the so-called high schools is even today in a very sorry condition. Few teachers understand that the study of history can never be to learn historical dates and events by heart and recite them by rote; that what matters is not whether the child knows exactly when this battle or that was fought, when a general was born, or even when a monarch (usually a very insignificant one) came into the crown of his forefathers. No, by the living God, this is very unimportant. To 'learn' history means to seek and find the forces which are the causes leading to those effects which we subsequently perceive as historical events.

No government has the right to decide on the truth of scientific principles, nor to prescribe in any way the character of the questions investigated. Neither may a government determine the aesthetic value of artistic creations, nor limit the forms of literacy or artistic expression. Nor should it pronounce on the validity of economic, historic, religious, or philosophical doctrines. Instead it has a duty to its citizens to maintain the freedom, to let those citizens contribute to the further adventure and the development of the human race.

But just then, for that fraction of time, it seems as though all things are possible. You can look across the limitations of your own life, and see that they are really nothing. In that moment when time stops, it is as though you know you could undertake any venture, complete it and come back to yourself, to find the world unchanged, and everything just as you left it a moment before. And it's as though knowing that everything is possible, suddenly nothing is necessary.

He shook his head, staring at her like a condemned man who beheld the face of his executioner. "Aline," he whispered, "Do you know what hell is?" "Yes." Her eyes overflowed. "Trying to exist with your heart living somewhere outside your body." "No. It's knowing that you have so little faith in my love, you would have condemned me to a lifetime of agony." His face contorted suddenly. "To something worse than death.

I want to propose a toast!" Taking a spoon he noisily tapped it against the crystal glass.  "Everyone!" He thundered, the large amount of whiskey he had consumed making him reckless.  "To Victor,  Ste. Genevieve's own inventor and my best friend, all the happiness in the world!"  The happy crowd shouted their approval.  "And to the ever, ever fair beauty Celena..." His voice cracking under the strain, and he wondered if he should stop now, before he embarrassed himself, before he made some horrible declaration.

The best way to take control over a people and control them utterly is to take a little of their freedom at a time, to erode rights by a thousand tiny and almost imperceptible reductions. In this way, the people will not see those rights and freedoms being removed until past the point at which these changes cannot be reversed.

I believe that sanitizing this aspect of the modern and ancient world is at the root of our troubles as a culture now. We're bred to be smug about how peaceful we are, so we can watch television and feel safely distant from violence, when it is part of our makeup. That smugness means we don't feel we have to do anything about the violence we see, because it's obviously committed by people who aren't as educated or civilized as we are. By holding ourselves aloof from global and historical violence, we allow it to continue. If we are ever to survive as a species, we need to admit we are violent and find ways to ease the plight of the victims of violence worldwide. (No, invading a violent country and bombing it will not inspire its people to give violence up. Go figure.) We must face who we are and what creates violence: helplessness, envy, rage, even the drive to grab the good things of the world that are flaunted in the faces of the poor. We must take responsibility and protect each other from violence.

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

Politics is a strong and slow boring of hard boards. It takes both passion and perspective. Certainly all historical experience confirms the truth - that man would not have attained the possible unless time and again he had reached out for the impossible. But to do that a man must be a leader, and not only a leader but a hero as well, in a very sober sense of the word. And even those who are neither leaders nor heroes must arm themselves with that steadfastness of heart which can brave even the crumbling of all hopes. This is necessary right now, or else men will not be able to attain even that which is possible today.

I know the truth now. You've figured out I'm falling in love with you and you're trying to make me stop by hurting me this way. Well it won't work. One way or another, I'm going to make you care about me. Yes, I am, unless your cold attitude kills me first. It's only fair, Connor. If I'm going to be miserable, by God, so are you. I am not a common wench and I will not be treated like one.

The blind faith in some half-assed conspiracy theories lines up with the logic of having to believe in something with no questions asked. It gives us peace and comfort. As simple as I was, I found that resorting to this absolute nonsense was the root of all our problems. It was a road of willingly-learned helplessness, for no action could make a difference, thereby no action was needed.

Each and every one of us has been born into a given historical reality, ruled by particular norms and values, and managed by a unique economic and political system. We take this reality for granted, thinking it is natural, inevitable and immutable. We forget that our world was created by an accidental chain of events, and that history shaped not only our technology, politics and society, but also our thoughts, fears and dreams. The cold hand of the past emerges from the grave of our ancestors, grips us by the neck and directs our gaze towards a single future. We have felt that grip from the moment we were born, so we assume that it is a natural and inescapable part of who we are. Therefore we seldom try to shake ourselves free, and envision alternative futures.

There is no time to reallocate the turkeys.” Without missing a beat, he blurts out, “Bring them to the house.” “Where? Are you hiding a turkey habitat up your ass, son? Where, in our historically protected house, am I going to put a couple of turkeys until I pardon them tomorrow?” “Put them in my room. I don’t care.” She outright laughs. “No.” “How is it different from a hotel room? Put the turkeys in my room, Mom.” “I’m not putting the turkeys in your room.” “Put the turkeys in my room.” “No.” “Put them in my room, put them in my room, put them in my room—” That night, as Alex stares into the cold, pitiless eyes of a prehistoric beast of prey, he has a few regrets. THEY KNOW, he texts Henry. THEY KNOW I HAVE ROBBED THEM OF FIVE-STAR ACCOMMODATIONS TO SIT IN A CAGE IN MY ROOM, AND THE MINUTE I TURN MY BACK THEY ARE GOING TO FEAST ON MY FLESH.

The word "We" is as lime poured over men, which sets and hardens to stone, and crushes all beneath it, and that which is white and that which is black are lost equally in the grey of it. It is the word by which the depraved steal the virtue of the good, by which the weak steal the might of the strong, by which the fools steal the wisdom of the sages. What is my joy if all hands, even the unclean, can reach into it? What is my wisdom, if even the fools can dictate to me? What is my freedom, if all creatures, even the botched and impotent, are my masters? What is my life, if I am but to bow, to agree and to obey? But I am done with this creed of corruption. I am done with the monster of "We," the word of serfdom, of plunder, of misery, falsehood and shame. And now I see the face of god, and I raise this god over the earth, this god whom men have sought since men came into being, this god who will grant them joy and peace and pride. This god, this one word: "I.

Look at that! The entire Australian kit dates from the 1940s and the uniforms are falling apart at the seams, the fucking boots you have issued to us are the same and everything is rotten. As for bloody weapons, we are issued with the Owen sub-machine gun. While the gun is still a very good weapon, the 9mm ammunition it uses is old WW2 stock and its propellants have deteriorated to the point where I doubt if the round will penetrate the back-pack of a fleeing Noggie!

I’ve been told that I cannot change shit, so I might as well stop torturing myself. My emotions are ridiculed and branded as childish. I have been told that the world has given up on my people. I have been told, and realise that on many occasions, I myself am viewed as an outcast by some of those suffering. I’ve been confronted and my answer is always the same: I care even in my most fucked-up moments. I care even when gates of shit pour open to drown me; I care because I am a citizen of the world.

I personally have a cunt. Sometimes it's 'flaps' or 'twat', but most of the time, it's my cunt. Cunt is a proper, old, historic, strong word. I like that my fire escape also doubles up as the most potent swearword in the English language. Yeah. That's how powerful it is, guys. If I tell you what I've got down there, old ladies and clerics might faint. I like how shocked people are when you say 'cunt'. It's like I have a nuclear bomb in my pants, or a tiger, or a gun. Compared to this the most powerful swearword men have got out of their privates is 'dick', which is frankly vanilla, and I believe you're allowed to use on, like, Blue Peter if something goes wrong. In a culture where nearly everything female is still seen as squeam-inducing, and/or weak - menstruation, menopause, just the sheer simple act of calling someone 'a girl' - I love that 'cunt' stands, on its own, as the supreme unvanquishable word. It has almost mystic resonance. It is a cunt - we all know it's a cunt - but we can't call it a cunt. We can't say the actual word. It's too powerful. Like Jews can never utter the Tetragrammaton - an must make do with 'Jehovah', instead.

I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus, and the rise of what has been called consensus science. I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had. Let's be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus. There is no such thing as consensus science. If it's consensus, it isn't science. If it's science, it isn't consensus. Period.

Moral law is an invention of mankind for the disenfranchisement of the powerful in favor of the weak. Historical law subverts it at every turn. A moral view can never be proven right or wrong by any ultimate test. A man falling dead in a duel is not thought thereby to be proven in error as to his views. His very involvement in such a trial gives evidence of a new and broader view. The willingness of the principals to forgo further argument as the triviality which it in fact is and to petition directly the chambers of the historical absolute clearly indicates of how little moment are the opinions and of what great moment the divergences thereof. For the argument is indeed trivial, but not so the separate wills thereby made manifest. Man's vanity may well approach the infinite in capacity but his knowledge remains imperfect and howevermuch he comes to value his judgments ultimately he must submit them before a higher court. Here there can be no special pleading. Here are considerations of equity and rectitude and moral right rendered void and without warrant and here are the views of the litigants despised. Decisions of life and death, of what shall be and what shall not, beggar all question of right. In elections of these magnitudes are all lesser ones subsumed, moral, spiritual, natural.

At this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement somewhat in detail of a course to be pursued seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself, and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured. On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war--seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came. One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether." With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.