Quotes about History

Human consciousness arose but a minute before midnight on the geological clock. Yet we mayflies try to bend an ancient world to our purposes, ignorant perhaps of the messages buried in its long history. Let us hope that we are still in the early morning of our April day.

With copious evidence ranging from Plato's haughtiness to Beethoven's tirades, we may conclude that the most brilliant people of history tend to be a prickly lot.

We are the offspring of history, and must establish our own paths in this most diverse and interesting of conceivable universes—one indifferent to our suffering, and therefore offering us maximum freedom to thrive, or to fail, in our own chosen way.

People talk about human intelligence as the greatest adaptation in the history of the planet. It is an amazing and marvelous thing, but in evolutionary terms, it is as likely to do us in as to help us along.

What would happen if believers and churches today followed the great people of the Bible and in Christian history and began to pray powerfully and effectively?

There's a slippery slope in regard to authority. If you say that the history in Genesis is not true, then you can just take man's ideas as true. When you go outside of Scripture, why shouldn't you just reinterpret what marriage means? So our emphasis is on the slippery slope regarding authority.

I'm proud of my father, but my pride cannot be fully measured by that snapshot in history. Because contrary to first glance, my father's legacy comes not from his presiding over the final act in the drama of fighting for equal rights - his legacy is about setting the stage.

Most of the really good literature I've read in my life was political, meaning it was important - about something going on in the history of the world - or contemporary.

It is with a kind of fear that I begin to write the history of my life.

For history tells us that while these truths may be self-evident, they've never been self-executing. That while freedom is a gift from God, it must be secured by his people here on earth.

Surely, in the light of history, it is more intelligent to hope rather than to fear, to try rather than not to try. For one thing we know beyond all doubt: Nothing has ever been achieved by the person who says, "It can't be done.

I decided to devote my life to telling the story because I felt that having survived I owe something to the dead. and anyone who does not remember betrays them again.