Top 1200 Quotes & Sayings by Famous Historians - Page 15

Dams have harmed our wildlife and made rivers less useful for recreation.

The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge.

There is a convention that the principal heir should be kept away from real danger. As the 'spare' rather than the heir, Harry is expected by the royal family to take the ultimate military risks.

Globalisation is not remotely new; it has been occurring, at differing rates and with differing degrees of scale, for centuries.

The brank, or scold's bridle, was unknown in America in its English shape: though from colonial records we learn that scolding women were far too plentiful, and were gagged for that annoying and irritating habit.

You have to be a soldier and a veteran, or a soldier who sacrificed your life for your country.

We live in an age of generational turmoil. Baby-boom parents are accused of clinging on to jobs and houses which they should be freeing up for their children. Twentysomethings who can't afford to leave home and can't get jobs are attacked as aimless and immature.

The freedom now desired by many is not freedom to do and dare but freedom from care and worry.

Freedom means the opportunity to be what we never thought we would be.

As we have sought through the centuries to define ourselves as human beings and as nations through the prisms of history and literature, no small part of that effort has drawn us to the subject of war. We might even say that the humanities began with war and from war, and have remained entwined with it ever since.

What we committed in the Indies stands out among the most unpardonable offenses ever committed against God and mankind and this trade [in Indian slaves] as one of the most unjust, evil, and cruel among them.

Men enter local politics solely as a result of being unhappily married.

Over time, the welfare state has become dysfunctional in a surprising way. But in a way it became a victim of its own success: It became so successful at prolonging life, that it becomes financially unsustainable, unless you make major changes to things like retirement ages.

The 'spirit of Davos' has definitely achieved a thing or two.

No real blood flows in the veins of the knowing subject constructed by Locke, Hume, and Kant, but rather the diluted extract of reason as a mere activity of thought.

In the Einstein way, I can't believe in a universe that doesn't have some sort of prime mover, identical with all of created nature. I have a whole lot of a harder time with supposing the fine print of the Torah was a direct revelation.

In no obvious sense was the American Revolution undertaken as a social revolution.

People who jump to conclusions rarely alight on them.

I didn't even have a birth certificate until I was 9 years old, which meant that, according to the state of Idaho and the federal government, I just didn't exist.

Jonas Salk showed that a killed virus vaccine would work and would be damned effective in fighting disease. This was something that virologists of the day pooh-poohed. And Salk proved them wrong.

We should remember that one man is much the same as another, and that he is best who is trained in the severest school.

He was what I often think is a dangerous thing for a statesman to be - a student of history; and like most of those who study history, he learned from the mistakes of the past how to make new ones.

Humans think in stories, and we try to make sense of the world by telling stories.

Dr. King, if he were alive today, probably would simply be a minister, a pastor. His initial intent was, indeed, just to be a preacher. He didn't have any egotistical desire or need to be a public figure or celebrity. He got drafted - or, really, dragged into it - initially in Montgomery.

Davos is my university.

Goering appeared at times to be all things to all men.

The African Americans' story is one that seems to be a repeated commitment to a scenario for success and failure. With each failure, the blow is that much more traumatizing until finally one reaches a point where there is to some degree an internalization, skepticism, fatalism, and expectation that it isn't going to work.

A communication highway without content is inconceivable.

And my interest in history was, and remains, very strong: what I wanted was to understand certain things better by understanding them psychoanalytically.

My mental approach is totally different. My coach predicated everything on defense. He always talked about defense, defense, defense. I took it to heart that if you play defense, you can take the heart from an offensive player.

Harlem was a development, a developer's dream and a place where residents had more space and more amenities than ever before. The subway reached 145th street about 1904, and it seemed that Harlem's destiny was to become largely a preserve of successful ethnics relocating and arriving. Then, overnight, the bust took place.

In researching literary agents I did what the books tell you to do: I looked at the acknowledgments page of a book that was similar to mine. Happily, that author thanked his agent. I looked up the agent on the web and found out that he not only represented authors writing books similar to mine, but I knew some of his clients! So, I sent in the manuscript, and they decided to represent it.

The frontier has gone, and with its going has closed the first period of American history.

The Idea of Anti-imperialism is... to be considered on several grounds. First, it is traditionally pervasive in the United States, though given its most extreme form in anti-Western academe. Second, it is used as a negative label for any effort by the United States, or the West, to encourage liberties, to block fanaticisms, and to make aid dependent on positive economic policies. Those concerned with the future development of their countries, and of the world, cannot afford to let obsolete resentments distort their aims.

Real success is finding you lifework in the work that you love.

The Soviet assumption that all other political life-forms and beliefs were inherently and immutably hostile was the simple and central cause of that Cold War.

FDR's New Deal and, after it, Republican President Dwight Eisenhower's similar Middle Way, used the government to regulate business, provide a basic social safety net, and promote infrastructure, like roads and bridges.

In both the presence of evil and the eventual triumph over evil the sweep is cosmic. It embraces the entire universe, what to man is both seen and unseen. The victory is to be accomplished through Christ.

The novelist must look on humanity without partiality or prejudice. His sympathy, like that of the historian, must be unbounded, and untainted by sect or party.

You have to liberate yourself first from the prejudices of the world in which you live.

It is better to be a has-been than a never-was.

Baseball presents a living heritage, a game poised between the powerful undertow of seasons past and the hope of next day, next week, next year.

Harlem was an exciting place in the '50s. There were nightclubs that, as a student of Columbia, you dashed off to. The community seemed very viable still.

I've been thinking that school, or certainly the traditional English public school model, is like a prison, in that you can't get out and it is hierarchical. As a result they have a lot of bullying. On the other hand if you mix ages and academic ability this is less of a problem.

The present moment is nice but it does not last. Living in it is like waiting in a junction town for the morning limited; the junction may be interesting but some day you will have to leave it and you do not know where the limited will take you.

What is the first part of politics? Education. The second? Education. And the third? Education.

Donald Trump very clearly said America first. That is a traditional right wing, but also very isolationist. That takes us back to the era of the 1920s, when there were immigration restrictions, and also to the isolationism before World War II.

Americans spend more money on Botox, face lifts and tummy tucks than on the age-old scourges of polio, small pox and malaria.

Of all men's miseries the bitterest is this: to know so much and to have control over nothing.

The Book of Revelation is all about the conflict, the contest between the forces of Good and Evil.

It is the recognition of history as a record of human experience which has inevitably resulted in the inclusion of this conquest of civilization within the framework of a complete human history.

Postmodernism entices us with the siren call of liberation and creativity, but it may be an invitation to intellectual and moral suicide.

Indian classical music was born when time barely existed. It developed further within the structures of royal courts and a system of patronage where the ruler or the feudal master determined all.

Making art for me is not fun in the sense of la, la, la, la, but it's something that I find very absorbing and very satisfying.

It clearly appears that there are no races in the world, however rude, uncultivated, barbarous, gross, or almost brutal they may be, who cannot be persuaded and brought to a good order and way of life, and made domestic, mild and tractable, provided . . . the method that is proper and natural to men is used; that is, love and gentleness and kindness.

I understand politically that uprisings take place as a combination of spontaneity and preparation, not that preparation is more important than spontaneity.

The military has a very long relationship with Hollywood that dates back to the silent film era.

Soils and national characters differ, but fairy tales are the same in plot and incidents, if not in treatment.

The results of philanthropy are always beyond calculation.

Religiously the Empire was pluralistic and marked by a search for a faith which would be satisfying intellectually and ethically and would give assurance of immortality.