A Quote by Polybius

If history is deprived of the Truth, we are left with nothing but an idle, unprofitable tale.

Polybius

Quote Topics

Deprived History Idle Left Nothing Tale Truth

Quote Author

Polybius
Greek - Historian
203 BC - 120 BC

History is idle gossip about a happening whose truth is lost the instant it has taken place.

Gore Vidal

What can we give a child when there is nothing left? All we have, I think, is the truth, the truth that will set him free, not limited, provable truth, but the open, growing, evolving truth that is not afraid.

Madeleine L'Engle

But who are we, where do we come from When all those years Nothing but idle talk is left And we are nowhere in the world?" = MEETING =

Boris Pasternak

History is nothing if not an epic tale of missed opportunities.

Graydon Carter

Records told the same tale, then the lie passed into history and became truth.

George Orwell

Very conscious of the fact that an effort was being made to destroy my mind, because I was deprived of books, deprived of any means of writing, deprived of human companionship. You never know how much you need it until you're deprived of it.

Wole Soyinka

They are not only idle who do nothing, but they are idle also who might be better employed.

Socrates

There is really nothing left to a genuine idle man, who possesses any considerable degree of vital power, but sin.

J. G. Holland

People used to complain about 'the idle rich.' But the idle rich did not do the kind of harm being done by today's busybody rich, who feed their own egos by bankrolling political crusades on the left which hurt the very people that the left claims to care about -- working people, minorities, and children.

Thomas Sowell

The man who tells the tale if he has a tale worth telling will know exactly what he is about and this business of the artist as a sort of starry-eyed inspired creature, dancing along, with his feet two or three feet above the surface of the earth, not really knowing what sort of prints he's leaving behind him, is nothing like the truth.

William Golding

There is no more self-contradictory concept than that of idle thoughts. What gives rise to the perception of a whole world can hardly be called idle. Every thought we have either contributes to truth or to illusion.

Gautama Buddha

History's political and economic power structures have always abhorred 'idle people' as potential troublemakers. Yet nature never abhors seemingly idle trees, grass, snails, coral reefs, and clouds in the sky.

R. Buckminster Fuller

Every soul, the philosopher says, is involuntarily deprived of truth; consequently in the same way it is deprived of justice and temperance and benevolence and everything of the kind. It is most necessary to keep this in mind, for thus thou wilt be more gentle towards all.

Marcus Aurelius

Listen, my father had written. Listen to hear if they are telling the truth or only part of the truth, for that is the lesson of history: that the victors tell the tale of their triumph in a manner to grant accolades to themselves and heap blame upon their rivals. Ask yourself if part of the story is being withheld by design or ignorance.

Kate Elliott

All other forms of history - economic history, social history, psychological history, above all sociology - seem to me history with the history left out.