History Quotations | Page 2

In the history of science, we often find that the study of some natural phenomenon has been the starting point in the development of a new branch of knowledge.

I have issues with anyone who tries to claim that science is unworkable - creationists who deny evidence for past history, yet are happy to benefit from the products of the methodology that they otherwise deny.

Most of the fiction on the California Gold Rush makes it sound like one grand, boyish adventure. However, when you read the real history, you realize that it wasn't that way at all.

I love the Warner Brothers lot. There is so much history there. They've done such a smart thing. They have signs outside of each stage which tell you what movies and TV shows were shot inside. So cool... you can almost feel the ghosts of actors past.

'Big Sky Mountain' is the story of Hutch Carmody and Kendra Shepherd, lovers with a history, and a lot of hurt pride. The book is about finding their way back to each other, growing as people, and inventing a life they can share.

Your genome knows much more about your medical history than you do.

In an instant, the law was transformed: from the last passenger on the safe-haven bandwagon to a pioneer into uncharted territory. For the first time in American history, it was not only legal to relinquish a baby; in Nebraska, it was okay to abandon any child of any age for any reason at any time - with the full protection of the law.

What is public history but a register of the successes and disappointments, the vices, the follies and the quarrels of those who engage in contention for power.

That so unlikely an outcome should accrue to a man possessed of such limited talent and so many flaws, and one lacking in a sense of ethics and decency was one of the bitter ironies of history.

I started drumming around the same time I came across this part of American history. But there seemed to be a way forward playing drums. There didn't seem to be a way forward being fascinated by a piece of history.

The president's decision yesterday to set into motion the development of the hydrogen bomb... has placed us on the knife-edge of history.

'What if?' history is a tricky game, but there is no doubt that the senior planners of D-Day - including Eisenhower and the British general Bernard Montgomery - believed that the Double Cross operation had played a pivotal role in the victory.

Any history buffs, people who like religion, suspense and mystery mixed with history, or anyone who likes 'The Da Vinci Code,' needs to read Ken Follett.

Many of our young people spend four years getting very expensive college degrees. But our universities fail them and the nation if they continue to graduate students with expertise in biochemistry, mathematics or history without teaching them to think about what problems are important and why.

I'm basically an optimist because I do think there's this historical modernisation process, and by and large it's been very beneficial to people. But there are blips. History doesn't proceed in a linear way.

I'm truly worried about the country's direction. I can tell you this categorically, we've got the weakest president and the weakest governor in the history of my 50 years of public service.

Whosoever, in writing a modern history, shall follow truth too near the heels, it may happily strike out his teeth.

It is apparent, if you go back through our history, that the grand juries of the criminal justice system do not value black lives.

I'm coaching 'swing at this, don't swing at that,' and in the middle of it, a kid looks at me and says, 'Coach, I think I'm going to fail history.' Or maybe their girlfriend just dumped them. These are kids, and once I embraced that, this became a lot more fun.

Throughout American history many of our social gains and much of our progress toward democracy were made possible by the active intervention of the federal government.

For the first time in history, a private company is organizing a mission to the moon. This mission will inspire countries of the world, citizens, our youth.

France is delighted at this new opportunity to show the world that when one has the will one can succeed in joining peoples who have been brought close by history.

People don't believe or understand that a community can lose hope. You can have a whole community where hopelessness is the norm, where folks don't have faith that things will get better because history and circumstances have proven over 30, 40, or 50 years that things don't get better.

From food trucks to hot dog stands to county fair favorites, 'street food' has enjoyed a rich and storied history in American cuisine. However, street food has been around for thousands of years. In fact, street food is believed to have originated as far back as Ancient Rome.

My mom started an air-freight company; my grandmother built a golf course. I have a certain degree of entrepreneurial risk-taking in my family history. Maybe that eventually rubbed off on me a little bit.

Being a little bit of a movie buff, the fact that I'm working in the middle of movie history is incredible.

English history turned on Henry VIII and his desires, his whims almost. And it was down to Cromwell to make those desires happen. He was the guy that fixed it. He was also the guy that eased Henry's conscience. Because Henry VIII had an enormous, tender conscience and great theological knowledge.

History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. History is who we are and why we are the way we are.

The so-called 'materialistic conception of history,' with the crude elements of genius of the early form which appeared, for instance, in the 'Communist Manifesto,' still prevails only in the minds of laymen and dilettantes.

It takes a perverse determination to drain that instinctive curiosity away and make history seem just remote, dead and disconnected from our contemporary reality. Conversely, it just takes skilful storytelling to recharge that connection to make the past come alive in our present.

Tradition means taking account of a wonderful history but remembering that everybody today looks to the future.

In the early days of the Russian Revolution in 1917, I was completely in sympathy with it. I felt that it established a new era in the history of the modern world. I was so overwhelmed by it that, if people made any unfriendly comment, I would vigorously defend it. If people condemned the Communist party, I would speak in its defense.

I always try to find a story in the margins of history, but I don't like to do too much that's improbable.

The moment that changed me for ever was when I had my first seminar with my history professor at the University of Sussex. I realised that history would answer all the questions I had spent my life asking. It was an extraordinary moment.

If you go back far enough and get a wider enough picture of history, we have let go of many things that follow a religious narrative. We don't burn witches anymore. Most people would consider that barbaric. We don't sacrifice human beings, which was a religious act practiced by numerous cultures on this planet.

Teaching the history of the British Empire links in with that of the world: for better and for worse, the Empire made us what we are, forming our national identity. A country that does not understand its own history is unlikely to respect that of others.

Smallpox, which spreads by respiration and kills roughly one in three of those infected, took hundreds of millions of lives during a recorded history dating to Pharaonic Egypt. The last case was in 1978, and the disease was declared eradicated on May 8, 1980.

Where I come from, it's a little bit like England. We start from the theater, and we do films a bit on our free time. The history of making films in Scandinavia is so old, it's like the oldest. The Nordic film industry started before Hollywood in Stockholm in Copenhagen.

I want people to be excited about cooling towers and megasheds; they're as much part of our history as the rural barn.

Helplessness induces hopelessness, and history attests that loss of hope and not loss of lives is what decides the issue of war

We have our own history, our own language, our own culture. But our destiny is also tied up with the destinies of other people - history has made us all South Africans.

One of the things that has to be faced is the process of waiting to change the system, how much we have got to do to find out who we are, where we have come from and where we are going.

You have to look at history as an evolution of society.

The whole westward expansion myth is seen as romantic. But its a joke, a blot on American history.

Everything must be recaptured and relocated in the general framework of history, so that despite the difficulties, the fundamental paradoxes and contradictions, we may respect the unity of history which is also the unity of life.

You have reckoned that history ought to judge the past and to instruct the contemporary world as to the future. The present attempt does not yield to that high office. It will merely tell how it really was.

The Declaration of Independence is a sacred part of American history.

Art must be parochial in the beginning to be cosmopolitan in the end.

I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.

There are no extraordinary men... just extraordinary circumstances that ordinary men are forced to deal with.

I think whatever art form you're in, whether TV, film or theater, you should know the history of who came before you and how the art form has changed or not changed and to learn from the greats.

If you look at it, the history of comedy has always been strongest among the nations who have been persecuted the most.

A feeling for history is almost an essential for writing and appreciating good science fiction, for sensing the connections between the past and future that run through our present.

Coming up in the Bay Area and being African American in a city that has a history of complex issues of violent crime, interaction with the police is always intense. That's something you have to learn. My mom taught me at a young age that if ever a cop stops you, you put your hands up and freeze - don't move.

I felt that the IRA, in the context of Irish history, and Sinn Fein were a legitimate force that had to be recognized, and you wouldn't have peace without them.

Most of the best music in American history was made by people with no options.

East Asia has prospered since the end of the Vietnam War, and Northeast Asia has prospered since the end of the Korean War in a way that seems unimaginable when you think of the history of the first half of the century.

I often tell people who want to write historical fiction: don't read all that much about the period you're writing about; read things from the period that you're writing about. There's a tendency to stoke up on a lot of biography and a lot of history, and not to actually get back to the original sources.

In the world of the present, in our time, we feel that suffering, anguish, the torments of body and soul, are greater than ever before in the history of mankind.

Working on 'Newsroom' has given me an appreciation of the struggle that you go through on the 24-hour news cycle. The people who are legitimately attempting to deliver honest news are really facing a tough, uphill climb that's a lot harder than any other time in history.

If you stop and think about our history, one of the reasons we had an American century and there is an American dream was because at key points in our history we made very bold decisions about making sure that there was very broad, universal access to quality education.

Throughout human history, people have developed strong loyalties to traditions, rituals, and symbols. In the most effective organizations, they are not only respected but celebrated. It is no coincidence that the most highly admired corporations are also among the most profitable.

One of the greatest things about being an artist is, as you get older, if you keep working hard in relationship to what you want the world to be and how you want it to become, there is a history of interesting growth that resonates with different moments in your life.

You have it within your grasp to be regarded as one of the greatest legislative sessions in the history of the state. If you're bold and if you're ready to aggressively reach for our future, all the ingredients are here. The opportunities are waiting for us.

Diamonds are a key component in the campaign to make poverty history.

You can look at history of these things, and Social Security wasn't devised to be a system that supported you for a 30-year retirement after a 25-year career... So there will be things that, you know, the retirement age has to be changed, maybe some of the benefits have to be affected, maybe some of the inflation adjustments have to be revised.

Goodrich was the biggest acquisition in the history of aerospace.

Going through college a Red Sox fan and knowing the history behind everything that was going on back in the '80s and finally getting a chance to win a World Series for this great city and bringing it back after 86 years, it was truly special, and it's one of the highlights that I'll remember for a long time.

When President Teddy Roosevelt posed for the cameras astride a massive steam shovel during construction of the Panama Canal in 1906, it was more than a simple photo op. Though the scene was clearly staged, it symbolized a crucial moment in American history.

There's a tremendous amount of work building the apparatus, getting the experiment to work. But sitting there late at night in the lab, and knowing light is going at bicycle speed, and that nobody in the history of mankind has ever been here before - that is mind-boggling. It's worth everything.

Every time we revise our history, we also revise the mythology of our history.

A basic truth that the history of the creation of the transistor reveals is that the foundations of transistor electronics were created by making errors and following hunches that failed to give what was expected.

I am not in the business of pointing fingers or making excuses. However, recent history has shown that I, like thousands of others in Ireland, incorrectly relied upon the persons who guided Anglo and who wrongfully sought to portray a 'blue chip' Irish banking sector.

I'm sure that was the right step, even though, formally speaking, it may seem disadvantageous for a president to resign. But, looking into what is happening today and what is going to happen in the future, I think history will show I made the right decision.

The problem with relegating black history to one really short month, the shortest month, is not only are we telling the same stories over and over again - which are amazing, George Washington Carver is incredible, there's nobody like Frederick Douglass - but there are so many.

I think little of people who will deny their history because it doesn't present the picture they would like.

We have to forget the past. History is something that even today we are paying the consequences, and the future is integration. We all as a people, as citizens, as the leadership of both countries should be looking in that direction.

South Africa never leaves one indifferent. Its history, its population, its landscapes and cultures - all speak to the visitor, to the student, to the friend of Africa.

I had always looked down on sociology as this arriviste discipline. It didn't have the noble history of English and history as a subject. But once I had a little exposure to it, I said, 'Hey, here's the key. Here's the key to understanding life and all its forms.'

Rarely in broadcasting history has so much been riding on the whimsical flick of a few thousand wrists.

The progress of science is much more muddled than is depicted in most history books. This is especially true of theoretical physics, partly because history is written by the victorious.

Writing historical novels can be dangerous. We need to be as accurate and as fair about the historical record as we can be, at the same time as creating our fictional characters and, hopefully, telling a good story. The challenge is weaving the fiction into the history.

What has history said of eminence without honor, wealth without wisdom, power and possessions without principle? The answer is reiterated in the overthrow of the mightiest empires of ancient times. Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome! The four successive, universal powers of the past. What and where are they?

I write about modern people who share a deep sense of connection to the mysteries of the past. I find that I understand myself and my world better when I'm able to peer into history as a mirror.

The cosmical importance of this conclusion is profound and the possibilities it opens for the future very remarkable, greater in fact than any suggested before by science in the whole history of the human race.

History repeats itself, and that's one of the things that's wrong with history

I have three degrees in history and only one in law, but since I came back to specialize in constitutional law where history is so essentially a part and an explanation of much that exists, the two disciplines blended very well.

I love hockey because of the respect for history and for the game itself.

The history of Europe over the last several centuries provides clear evidence of the transformative power of commerce.

But the power of instruction is seldom of much efficacy, except in those happy dispositions where it is almost superfluous.

In one aspect, my works record the history of the development of Chinese society. Concern about the situation of Chinese reality is one important theme of my works. I am trying to ask, 'How does our society develop? What are the problems in our society? Where is our direction leading?'

Before it was revealed that my character on 'Lost' had a troubled history, a fan came up to me and said, 'Wow, you're a really nice guy.' To me, that was a compliment, having played a very villainous guy.

The arts community is generally dominated by liberals because if you are concerned mainly with painting or sculpture, you don't have time to study how the world works. And if you have no understanding of economics, strategy, history and politics, then naturally you would be a liberal.

More than 90% of Chinese believe themselves to be Han. Of course, such a vast population is derived from countless different races, but because China has enjoyed such a long and continuous history as a polity, there has been thousands of years of mixing, melding and assimilation.

The British are coming. One if by land, two if by sea.

I've left Boro in the Premiership, which was always what I wanted to do. Actually that's not quite true. I took them to three cup finals, where they'd never been before. But I had set my eyes on being the first manager in their history to deliver a major trophy.

If I wasn't serving in Congress, I've always wanted to be a high school teacher. Specifically, I want to teach a course on modern American history and use Garry Trudeau's Doonesbury as a primary text.

As an immigrant, I appreciate, far more than the average American, the liberties we have in this country. Silence is a big enemy of morality. I don't want our blunders in history to get repeated.

My family kept its history to itself. On the plus side, I didn't have to hear nightmarish stories about the Holocaust, the pogroms, terrible illnesses, painful deaths. My elderly parents never even spoke about their ailments.

They were afraid, never having learned what I taught myself: Defeat the fear of death and welcome the death of fear.