A Quote by Henry David Thoreau

History has neither the venerableness of antiquity, nor the freshness of the modern. It does as if it would go to the beginning ofthings, which natural history might with reason assume to do; but consider the Universal History, and then tell us,--when did burdock and plantain sprout first?
Textbooks should show that neither morality nor immorality can simply be conferred upon us by history. Merely being part of the United States, without regard to our own acts and ideas, does not make us moral or immoral beings. History is more complicated than that.
In history there are no control groups. There is no one to tell us what might have been. We weep over the might have been, but there is no might have been. There never was. It is supposed to be true that those who do not know history are condemned to repeat it. I don't believe knowing can save us. What is constant in history is greed and foolishness and a love of blood and this is a thing that even God--who knows all that can be known--seems powerless to change.
I suggest that if you know history, then you might not be so easily fooled by the government when it tells you you must go to war for this or that reason -that history is a protective armor against being misled.
What does the artist do? He draws connections. He ties the invisible threads between things. He dives into history, be it the history of mankind, the geological history of the Earth or the beginning and end of the manifest cosmos.
Human behaviour reveals uniformities which constitute natural laws. If these uniformities did not exist, then there would be neither social science nor political economy, and even the study of history would largely be useless. In effect, if the future actions of men having nothing in common with their past actions, our knowledge of them, although possibly satisfying our curiosity by way of an interesting story, would be entirely useless to us as a guide in life.
So I did a program with the Recording Academy, the Grammy Museum. So pretty much they take, like, one hundred kids during the summer and for a week or two every day they go over something different in music history. Then during the music history part of the program, they would just tell us about the different eras.
All other forms of history - economic history, social history, psychological history, above all sociology - seem to me history with the history left out.
what are the objects of an useful American education? classical knowlege, modern languages & chiefly French, Spanish, & Italian; Mathematics; Natural philosophy; Natural History; Civil History; Ethics.
The history of philosophy is not, like the history of the sciences, to be studied with the intellect alone. That which is receptive in us and that which impinges upon us from history is the reality of man's being, unfolding itself in thought.
It is said that the history of peoples who have a history is the history of class struggle. It might be said with at least as much truthfulness, that the history of peoples without history is a history of their struggle against the state.
Universal history, the history of what man has accomplished in this world, is at bottom the History of the Great Men who have worked here.
Prophecy and history predict and record a great and universal apostasy which was to be followed by a restoration as predicted by John in Revelation. The fact of the great apostasy is attested by both sacred and secular writ, and history bears witness that it became universal. We proclaim this fact of history not as an attack on any church. We do not assume any position of "holier than thou" or "wiser than thou," but we announce this historic fact of the apostasy as a vindication of the claim that there has been in fact a restoration of the gospel.
The history of woman is the history of the continued and universal oppression of one sex by the other. The emancipation of woman is her restoration to equal rights and privileges with man.... Need we wonder, then, at the sad spectacle which humanity offers us? Its hideous wars, its social abominations, its foul creeds, its treacheries, vices, wants, diseases, lusts, tyrannies, and crimes are the natural outcome of the subjugation of one half of the human race by the other.
I've always tried to write California history as American history. The paradox is that New England history is by definition national history, Mid-Atlantic history is national history. We're still suffering from that.
Even men of the noblest possible moral character are extremely susceptible to the influence of the physical charms of others. Modern, no less then Ancient History, supplies us with many most painful examples of what I refer to. If it were not so, indeed, History would be quite unreadable.
Won't it be wonderful when black history and native American history and Jewish history and all of U.S. history is taught from one book. Just U.S. history.
This site uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience. More info...
Got it!