If a secret history of books could be written, and the author's private thoughts and meanings noted down alongside of his story, how many insipid volumes would become interesting, and dull tales excite the reader!
Numerous politicians have seized absolute power and muzzled the press. Never in history has the press seized absolute power and muzzled the politicians.
I don't think that a leader can control, to any great extent, his destiny. Very seldom can he step in and change the situation if the forces of history are running in another direction.
We live in an era with no historical precedents. History is no longer useful as a tool in helping us understand current changes.
It is capitalist America that produced the modern independent woman. Never in history have women had more freedom of choice in regard to dress, behavior, career, and sexual orientation.
Every library should try to be complete on something, if it were only the history of pinheads.
In its history, Europe has committed so many massacres and horrors that it should bow its own head in shame.
If you think Abraham Lincoln became famous for inventing the town car, it is time to spend a few hours on history.
History is, strictly speaking, the study of questions the study of answers belongs to anthropology and sociology.
The history of the last century shows, as we shall see later, that the advice given to governments by bankers, like the advice they gave to industrialists, was consistently good for bankers, but was often disastrous for governments, businessmen, and the people generally.
Throughout human history, the apostles of purity, those who have claimed to possess a total explanation, have wrought havoc among mere mixed-up human beings.
I didn't do improv in college, I never performed, I didn't do theater either. I was in student government, I was a history major.
No period of history has ever been great or ever can be that does not act on some sort of high, idealistic motives, and idealism in our time has been shoved aside, and we are paying the penalty for it.
It's very attractive to people to be a victim. Instead of having to think out the whole situation, about history and your group and what you are doing... if you begin from the point of view of being a victim, you've got it half-made. I mean intellectually.
We wonder if we will be the first generation in American history to leave our children with fewer opportunities and a less prosperous nation than the one we inherited.
After all, when the world looks to America, they look to us because we are the most successful political and economic experiment in human history.
History is a people's memory, and without a memory, man is demoted to the lower animals.
Storytelling in general is a communal act. Throughout human history, people would gather around, whether by the fire or at a tavern, and tell stories. One person would chime in, then another, maybe someone would repeat a story they heard already but with a different spin. It's a collective process.
There is little for the great part of the history of the world except the bitter tears of pity and the hot tears of wrath.
I have never denied my background or my culture. I have taught my child to embrace her Mexican heritage, to love my first language, Spanish, to learn about Mexican history, music, folk art, food, and even the Mexican candy I grew up with.
The public history of modern art is the story of conventional people not knowing what they are dealing with.
Unlike any other leader in modern American history, we are led today by a president that has decided to pit Americans against each other.
History is malleable. A new cache of diaries can shed new light, and archeological evidence can challenge our popular assumptions.
The history of progress is written in the blood of men and women who have dared to espouse an unpopular cause, as, for instance, the black man's right to his body, or woman's right to her soul.
Imagine a part of the U.S.A., from which the U.S.A. started - where is the cradle of your history? This is Kosovo for Serbia.
I was bused to a school in Gerritsen Beach in Brooklyn in 1972. I was one of the first black kids in the history of the school.
Black History Month must be more than just a month of remembrance it should be a tribute to our history and reminder of the work that lies in the months and years ahead.
In a typical history book, black Americans are mentioned in the context of slavery or civil rights. There's so much more to the story.
It is like writing history with lightning and my only regret is that it is all so terribly true.
All the lessons of history in four sentences: Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad with power. The mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly small. The bee fertilizes the flower it robs. When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.
And thus goes segregation which is the most far-reaching development in the history of the Negro since the enslavement of the race.
The history of the world is none other than the progress of the consciousness of freedom.
I love studying Ancient History and seeing how empires rise and fall, sowing the seeds of their own destruction.
It all happened so fast. The ghetto. The deportation. The sealed cattle car. The fiery altar upon which the history of our people and the future of mankind were meant to be sacrificed.
Becoming emancipated at 14, my life wasn't normal. I didn't have to go to school, so I didn't. I was rebellious by nature. I spent my 20s focusing on my company, Flower Films, and producing movies. Now that I'm almost 30, I would like to try other things in lie. I'm crazy about photography, and I want to take an art history class.
I love doing normal things - movies, shopping, going out with friends, writing, reading, taking hot bubble baths - that's a big one for relaxation. I also love to go to art and history museums.
My place in history will depend on what I can do for the people and not on what the people can do for me.