Top 1200 Quotes & Sayings by Famous Historians - Page 20

[Christ's] character is twofold: like the head of the body in that he is regarded as God and yet comparable to the feet in that he put on humanity for the sake of our salvation, a man of passions like ours.

Those who have no record of what their forebears have accomplished lose the inspiration which comes from the teaching of biography and history.

So long as free land exists, the opportunity for a competency exists, and economic power secures political power.

From the time I was a little boy I found myself reading history when I had a choice. I read a lot of things, but history had a special appeal for me.

The ABC of our profession is to avoid these large abstract terms in order to try to discover behind them the only concrete realities, which are human beings.

Whether they will or not, Americans must now begin to look outward. The growing production of the country demands it.

The main reason why historians have skated over the relationship of Victorian PMs with the press is that they haven't been looking for it. It takes a lecturer in media studies such as Paul Brighton to point out that media management was part of the job of a Victorian prime minister.

In the search for meaning we must not forget that the gods (or God, for that matter) are a concept of the human mind; they are the creatures of man, not vice versa. They are needed and invented to give meaning and purpose to the struggle that is life on Earth, to explain strange and irregular phenomena of nature, haphazard events and, above all, irrational human conduct. They exist to bear the burden of all things that cannot be comprehended except by supernatural intervention or design.

As a single atom man is an enigma: as a whole he is a mathematical problem. As an individual he is a free agent, as a species the offspring of necessity.

Righteousness is easy in retrospect.

I don't reverberate to victimhood, probably because of my own life. I refused to become a victim myself, so it's not one of my big stories.

Every man is the architect of his own fortune.

Look at liberty's greatest historic advances: ending slavery. Giving women the vote. Outlawing legal segregation. Each and every time, the people at the forefront of advancing those reforms - often putting their lives on the line - called themselves liberals.

The way towards 'wisdom' or towards 'freedom' is the way towards your inner being. This is the simplest definition of metaphysics.

Truth is confirmed by inspection and delay; falsehood by haste and uncertainty.

In the Land of Ire, the belief in fairies, gnomes, ogres and monsters is all but dead; in the Land of Ind, it still flourishes in all the vigour of animism.

The DoD has never undergone an audit. In 2004, it actually pledged to undergo a full audit by 2007, but that deadline came and went, and then they moved it to 2016. No one, not even the DoD, thinks they'll actually be able to pass it in 2016.

The word "democracy" is a Western word obviously. It doesn't exist in Arabic. Democratiya is a loan word. We in the Western world make the great mistake of assuming that ours is the only form of good government; that democracy means what it means in the Anglo-American world and a few other places in the West, but not many others. Muslims have their own tradition on limited government. Now in Islam, there is a very strong political tradition. Because the different circumstances, Islam is political from the very beginning.

My main interest... is the love of truth, whether pleasant or not. Truth is self-sufficient, and there is nothing to which it can be subordinated without loss. When truth is made subservient to anything else, however great (say religion), it becomes impure and sordid.

If the corrupt Jordanian monarchy were overthrown, it would be the ideal opportunity to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, because the West Bank and Jordan could then be united. There is already a Palestinian majority in Jordan, and there is enough room for everyone there. That would be the best revolution I could imagine.

As liberty of thought is absolute, so is liberty of speech, which is 'inseparable' from the liberty of thought. Liberty of speech, moreover, is essential not only for its own sake but for the sake of truth, which requires absolute liberty for the utterance of unpopular and even demonstrably false opinions.

Nor ought we ever to allow any growing power to acquire such a degree of strength as to be able to tear from us, without resistance, our natural, undisputed rights.

I would I could stand on a busy corner, hat in hand, and beg people to throw me all their wasted hours.

The work of Henry James has always seemed divisible by a simple dynastic arrangement into three reigns: James I, James II, and the Old Pretender.

To most of us, adulthood means being able to earn a living, possess a home, get married and rear children, and this implies having autonomy or control over one's life. In the 19th century, becoming an adult was celebrated as a liberation from paternal authority. Today we regard it more as a time of regret and stagnation.

History is Philosophy teaching by example.

Keep your feet on the ground, but let your heart soar as high as it will. Refuse to be average or to surrender to the chill of your spiritual environment.

Please, shun darkness, and like trees, always seek to grow toward the light.

Exhortations to obstruct the operations of Government in detail, should; Exhortations to resist all.

I find nothing more depressing than optimism.

I wonder if there'll ever be a time where you're not judged by your appearance. It seems that wherever you've got to, your appearance is always discussed. It's never said about men. We talk about a man's charisma, not his looks.

Learn as much by writing as by reading.

We all admire the wisdom of people who come to us for advice.

Just as a balloon filled gradually with air bursts when the limit of its tensile strength is passed, there are thresholds of radical, disruptive change in politics. When those thresholds are crossed, the impossible suddenly becomes probable, with revolutionary implications for governments and nations.

Censorship no longer works by hiding information from you; censorship works by flooding you with immense amounts of misinformation, of irrelevant information, of funny cat videos, until you're just unable to focus.

If the Negro in the ghetto must eternally be fed by the hand that pushes him into the ghetto, he will never become strong enough to get out of the ghetto.

The item of clothing that makes us feel powerful is the one that makes us feel confident and self-assured, that magically makes us look our best in all kinds of circumstances.

Kissinger celebrants inevitably point to two things to justify their admiration: an opening to China - 'rapprochement' - and improved relations with the Soviet Union - detente - which included SALT, a historic arms-limitation treaty.

When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.

Bullock by name, and Bullock by nature.

Now when the ancient Egyptians, awestruck and wondering, turned their eyes to the heavens, they concluded that two gods, the sun and the moon, were primeval and eternal; and they called the former Osiris, the latter Isis.

My first restoration was on 'Napoleon,' trying to put the French version in with the English version, and it was most unsatisfactory.

Education is learning what you didn't even know you didn't know.

For people like me, who have got their flags and wars mixed up, I think it should be pointed out that there may have been only one War of 1812, but there are four distinct versions of it - the American, the British, the Canadian, and the Native American.

Up to our own day American history has been in a large degree the history of the colonization of the Great West. The existence of an area of free land, its continuous recession, and the advance of American settlement westward, explain American development.

A university's essential character is that of being a center of free inquiry and criticism - a thing not to be sacrificed for anything else.

Truth is often attended with danger.

In revering the Founders, we undervalue ourselves and sabotage our own efforts to make improvements - necessary improvements - in the republican experiment they began.

If we pay no attention to it, time does not exist.

Goering was a contradictory [and] complex ... character.

All the lessons of history in four sentences: Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad with power. The mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly small. The bee fertilizes the flower it robs. When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.

Some people are more terrorist than others.

As to London we must console ourselves with the thought that if life outside is less poetic than it was in the days of old, inwardly its poetry is much deeper.

Character is the essence of all that a man has seen in life and regards as high and exalted. Character is like truth: the substance of the things that a man has forgotten but the substance of the things that are worth remembering in life.

To speak ill of others is a dishonest way of praising ourselves. Nothing is often a good thing to say, and always a clever thing to say.

By common consent gray hairs are a crown of glory; the only object of respect that can never excite envy.

The most malicious kind of hatred is that which is built upon a theological foundation.

I arrived from Harvard, where I had studied philosophy and the history of ideas, with a bias toward literature and formal thought.

When the past no longer illuminates the future, the spirit walks in darkness.

If you are strong and fighting the weak, then if you kill your opponent then you are a scoundrel... if you let him kill you, then you are an idiot.