A Quote by Martin Gardner

Biographical history, as taught in our public schools, is still largely a history of boneheads; ridiculous kings and queens, paranoid political leaders, compulsive voyagers, ignorant general the flotsam and jetsam of historical currents. The men who radically altered history, the great scientists and mathematicians, are seldom mentioned, if at all.

Martin Gardner

Quote Topics

Altered Compulsive Currents Flotsam General Great Great Scientist Historical History Ignorant Kings Kings And Queens Largely Leaders Mathematicians Men Mentioned Our Paranoid Political Political Leader Political Leaders Public Public School Public Schools Queens Radically Ridiculous Schools Scientists Seldom Still Taught

Quote Author

Martin Gardner
American - Mathematician
Born: October 21, 1914

The way they taught history in schools was not appealing. They stressed wars and dates. They left the people out. I was attracted to history by the need to know about the people. In China, I went to a British school, and we just learned about kings and queens. Back in America, I had the regular social studies curriculum.

Jean Fritz

A free and democratic society is not the norm. When you look to the history books, world history was not based on great democratic societies but on imperialism, absolute rule, kings, queens, monarchs, dictators.

Rocky Carroll

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.

Maya Angelou

My mom was a teacher. In the 1960s and '70s, she taught history at two largely African American public high schools in Washington, D.C. - McKinley Tech and H.D. Woodson. Her example taught me the importance of equality for all Americans.

Brett Kavanaugh

Alexander the Great changed a few boundaries and killed a few men. Both he and Napoleon were forced into fame by circumstances outside of themselves and by currents of the time, but Margaret Sanger made currents and circumstances. When the history of our civilization is written, it will be a biological history and Margaret Sanger will be its heroine.

H. G. Wells

For long, history was mainly political history, and historical narrative was confined to an account of the most important crises in political life, or to an account of wars and great generals.

Michael Rostovtzeff

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.

Kevin Starr

Human history has become too much a matter of dogma taught by 'professionals' in ivory towers as though it's all fact. Actually, much of human history is up for grabs. The further back you go, the more that the history that's taught in the schools and universities begins to look like some kind of faerie story.

Graham Hancock

History is no longer just a chronicle of kings and statesmen, of people who wielded power, but of ordinary women and men engaged in manifold tasks. Women's history is an assertion that women have a history.

Toshiko Kishida

I've always been interested in history, but they never taught Negro history in the public schools...I don't see how a history of the United States can be written honestly without including the Negro. I didn't [paint] just as a historical thing, but because I believe these things tie up with the Negro today. We don't have a physical slavery, but an economic slavery. If these people, who were so much worse off than the people today, could conquer their slavery, we can certainly do the same thing....I am not a politician. I'm an artist, just trying to do my part to bring this thing about.

Jacob Lawrence

If, in schools, we keep teaching that history is divided into American history and Chinese history and Russian history and Australian history, we're teaching kids that they are divided into tribes. And we're failing to teach them that we also, as human beings, share problems that we need to work together with.

David Christian

I've benefited greatly from studying many effective people from history. Among those who've influenced me the most are Ronald Reagan, Theodore Roosevelt, and Winston Churchill. Each of the three altered history; each was self-created to a great extent; and each was a great student of history and leadership.

James M Strock

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

I wanted to be a part of history and not just a recorder and teacher of history. So that kind of attitude towards history, history itself as a political act, has always informed my writing and my teaching.

Howard Zinn

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.

Thomas Carlyle

There has always been interest in certain phases and aspects of history - military history is a perennial bestseller, the Civil War, that sort of thing. But I think that there is a lot of interest in historical biography and what's generally called narrative history: history as story-telling.

H. W. Brands

A Quote by Martin Gardner

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