History Quotes

“Your son is heir to an enormous fortune and name. Someone would be bound to bid for you him and take him as his ward.”

“One day in the woods he met an Indian. They stood in the wet, cold woods and looked at each other, and they could not talk because they did not know each other's words”

“I'm a big champion of talking about Britain's colonial past but the important thing is not hiding it away and giving a true account of history.”

“Only a blind man could have lived through these last years without seeing what was bearing down upon us; so I made myself blind as I could manage. I wanted to believe the worst was behind me, and I found an easy way to make it so. I simply turned my back on what was coming.”

“I think the rise of quantitative econometrics and a highly mathematical approach to risk management was the obverse of a decline in interest in financial history.”

“We've talked and written about the World War so much that it has almost been purged off. The bitterness is gone. The drama came to an end and it is history.”

“The history of Wall Street is inseparable from New York.”

“Herodotus says, "Very few things happen at the right time, and the rest do not happen at all: the conscientious historian will correct these defects.”

“Power is always personal: any study of a Western democratic leader today reveals that, even in a transparent system with its short periods in office, personalities shape administrations. Democratic leaders often rule through trusted retainers instead of official ministers. In any court, power is as fluid as human personality.”

“We can't let extremists on any side hijack or rewrite history because those who don't study history are doomed to repeat it.”

“When I looked further into my mother's history, I realised that her anxieties and her neuroses could be accounted for by facts from a very early age. Her parents, William Henry Jones and Sarah Emily, were desperately poor.”

“My favorite literature to read is fairly dry history. I like the framework, and my imagination can do the rest.”

“Couldn't I try...Naturally, it wouldn't be a question of a tune...But couldn't I in another medium?...It would have to be a book: I don't know how to do anything else. But not a history book: history talks about what has existed - an existent can never justify the existence of another existent. My mistake was to try to resuscitate Monsieur de Rollebon. Another kind of book. I don't quite know which kind - but you would have to guess, behind the printed words, behind the pages, something which didn't exist, which was above existence. The sort of story, for example, which could never happen, an adventure. It would have to be beautiful and hard as steel and make people ashamed of their existence.I am going, I feel irresolute. I dare not make a decision. If I were sure that I had talent...but I have never, never written anything of that sort; historical articles, yes - if you could call them that. A book. A novel. And there would be people who would read this novel and who would say: 'It was Antoine Roquentin who wrote it, he was a red-headed fellow who hung about in cafés', and they would think that about my life as I think about the life of the Negress: as about something precious and almost legendary. A book. Naturally, at first it would only be a tedious, tiring job, it wouldn't prevent me from existing or from feeling that I exist. But a time would have to come when the book would be written, would be behind me, and I think that a little of its light would fall over my past. Then, through it, I might be able to recall my life without repugnance. Perhaps one day, thinking about this very moment, about this dismal moment at which I am waiting, round-shouldered, for it to be time to get on the train, perhaps I might feel my heart beat faster and say to myself: 'It was on that day, at that moment that it all started.' And I might succeed - in the past, simply in the past - in accepting myself.”

“Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history. We, of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation.”

“I thought I was okay in my first film, and then I was really, really bad in some films. I really cringe when I see some of my scenes. There's a scene in one film where a dog is biting me; the expressions I have made should be qualified as the most over-acted scene in the history of the cinema. The dog's expressions were more real than mine.”

“Indian artists are working with a history that's overwhelming and rich.”

“I'm the Latin artist who has been the most successful in history at representing the Latin culture.”

“We've seen it time and again - Chinese companies don't play by the rules, committing intellectual property theft and disregarding basic regulatory standards at the expense of investors. Not a single taxpayer dollar should be invested with these entities that have a clear history of corruption.”

“The Huygens images were everything our images from orbit were not. Instead of hazy, sinuous features that we could only guess were streams and drainage channels, here was incontrovertible evidence that at some point in Titan's history - and perhaps even now - there were flowing liquid hydrocarbons on the surface.”

“It's subjunctive history. You know, the subjunctive? The mood used when something may or may not have happened. When it is imagined.”