Alternate History Quotes

The Healing spells on his chest were certainly earning their keep tonight. Sullivan got to his feet. The lack of noise from the courtyard indicated that his team had gotten all the mechanical men. "Thanks."

Toru just grunted a noncommittal response as he lifted the feed tray to check the condition of his borrowed machine gun. They didn't see the final robot inside until it turned on its eye and illuminated the Iron Guard in blue light.

Sullivan's Spike reversed gravity, and the gigantic machine fell upward to hit the steel beams in the ceiling. Sullivan cut his Power and the robot dropped. It crashed hard into the floor where it lay twitching and kicking. The two of them riddled the mechanical man with bullets until the light died and it lay still in a spreading puddle of oil.

"Normally, this would be the part where you thank me for returning the favor and saving your life."

"Yes. Normally… If we were court ladies instead of warriors," Toru answered. "Shall we continue onward or do you wish to stop and discuss your feelings over tea?"

Sullivan looked forward to the day that the two of them would be able to finish their fight. "Let's go. ~ Larry Correia

History is made and preserved by and for particular classes of people. A camera in some hands can preserve an alternate history. ~ David Wojnarowicz

I had thought that my being would collapse when I gifted my soul', said Neville. 'Why is it then that I still breathe, and feel, and move?' 'Because,' said Mary, 'when you gift something wholly and completely and unhesitatingly it returns to you doublefold. ~ Sara Douglass

Alternate history fascinates me, as it fascinates all novelists, because 'What if?' is the big thing. ~ Kate Atkinson

That's our cue," Dr. Chadwick noted, managing to approximate a cheerful smile, addressing the room at large. "Everyone please stand behind the yellow line until the doors open. No food, drink, flash photography, or video cameras are permitted. Once aboard the ride, please keep your hands and arms inside the vehicle at all times until we come to a full and complete stop. Otherwise, they're apt to end up in another universe somewhere without ya, and wouldn't that fry your noggin? ~ Stephanie Osborn

If there's a zeppelin, it's alternate history. If there's a rocketship, it's science fiction. If there are swords and/or horses, it's fantasy. A book with swords and horses in it can be turned into science fiction by adding a rocketship to the mix. If a book has a rocketship in it, the only thing that can turn it back into fantasy is the Holy Grail. ~ Debra Doyle

Suddenly the images in the center of the room became more than images. They solidified. ~ Stephanie Osborn

But I knew it wasn't just the cute girl on the screen that had made Eunice cry. It was her father laughing, being kind, the family momentarily loving and intact - a cruel side trip into the impossible, an alternate history. The dinner was over. The waiters were clearing the table with resignation and without a word. I knew that, according to tradition, I had to allow Dr. Park to pay for the meal, but I went into my apparat and transferred him three hundred yuan, the total of the bill, out of an unnamed account. I did not want his money. Even if my dreams were realised and I would marry Eunice someday, Dr. Park would always remain to me a stranger. After thirty-nine years of being alive, I had forgiven my own parents for not knowing how to care for a child, but that was the depth of my forgiveness. ~ Gary Shteyngart

The day I came squealing and squalling into the world was the first time someone tried to kill me. I guess it should have been obvious to everyone right then that I wasn't going to have a normal life. ~ Justina Ireland

When I first started working on 'Staying Dead,' I got some well-meaning but negative feedback from industry folk because - back in 2001 - epic fantasy was still the big thing, alternate history a tight runner-up. ~ Laura Anne Gilman

In the many-mansioned house of Alternate History, I occupy a small corner. The trio of what-ifs I chronicled in 'Then Everything Changed' all begin with tiny, highly plausible twists of fate that lead to hugely consequential shifts in history. ~ Jeff Greenfield

That's one of our speculations, by the way. That the prior version of history that this one overwrote was horrible. Complete geopolitical mayhem; half of New York City is underwater. The United States is headed toward civil war, or ruled by an artificial-intelligence construct, or some such other thing. Real end-of-days stuff. That the instances of ourselves who existed in that history figured out what we have: that the invention of the causality violation device was the cause. That in that prior version of history, Rebecca did not die in a car accident. That she went back to the past on a mission, as a volunteer, well aware of her sacrifice. ~ Dexter Palmer

His touch felt like coming back, and Quincy realized she had been waiting for it. When he pulled away, both of his hands now on the sides of her face, his eyes searching hers for answers, Quincy nodded then wrapped her arms around him. She pressed her face to his chest, and his response was to gather her to him, saying something she couldn't her.

And there it was, the heartbeat she had heard the night of the Fothergils' ball, pulsing again in the shell of her ear. Quincy closed her eyes from relief. It gave her the same comfort the sound of the press gave her. It was a familiar machine. ~ Beth Brower

Shitting fucking bastard! Fuck off you massive cockwank!' - Misty Meanor, during a particularly stressful encounter. ~ Matthew Sylvester

Oh, it doesn't work at all. That's the problem! It's an endless, halting parade of inspections, bribes, and nonsense - but if you're aboard a Texas vessel, you'll find less inconvenience along the way."
"It's because of their guns!" declared Mr. Henderson, once more escaping his reverie, bobbing out of it as if to gasp for air.
"Concise, my love." Mrs. Henderson gave him a smile. "And correct. Texans are heavily armed and often impatient. They don't need to be transporting arms and gunpowder to create a great nuisance for anyone who stops them, so they tend to be stopped ... less often. ~ Cherie Priest

Jason smiled. The sound of wings was louder now, the fluttering of angels come to carry him home. ~ Robert Ferrigno

Watson fully comprehended the fact that occasionally it is useful for one's adversaries to underestimate one's abilities."
~Sherlock Holmes ~ Stephanie Osborn

Under the crust of that portion of Earth called the United States of America - "from California . . . to the Gulf Stream waters" - are interred the bones, villages, fields, and sacred objects of American Indians. They cry out for their stories to be heard through their descendants who carry the memories of how the country was founded and how it came to be as it is today. [opening lines of the Introduction; ellipsis sic]. ~ Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

Idealism often rewrites history to suit her narrative. ~ Amy Harmon

To study history means to search for and discover the forces that are the causes of those results which appear before our eyes as historical events. The art of reading and studying consists in remembering the essentials and forgetting what is not essential. ~ Adolf Hitler

The hard-fought victories in America's checkered history were won neither with parchment nor with words, but with guns, with blood, and with unimaginable suffering. Slavery, like Nazism and other totalitarian horrors, was vanquished by flying steel, by heartbreak, and by brute force - by whites and blacks who together smashed the institutions that had hijacked American liberty and perverted it for their own profit. But triggers are ultimately pulled by men, and successful campaigns require their practitioners to carry with them more than merely bombs and water. 'Europe was created by history,' Margaret Thatcher liked to say, but 'America was created by philosophy.' That philosophy, established by the founding generation and routinely recruited by the excluded ever since, remains extraordinarily potent - a North Star for wandering discontents within America's borders and without. ~ Charles C.W. Cooke

History, you see, is like the interlocking wheels turning in a ticking-thing. Something unexpected happens, some sort of hiccup... the wheels are jogged... and then they set off again, beating out the time in a new pattern. ~ Cressida Cowell

If there's one country that can be trusted to understand the complexity of history, it's Israel. ~ Donald Tusk

. . . [A]ny history that deals with the efforts of the populace to defend itself from the abuses of wealth and tyranny is people's history . . . A people's history should be not only an account of popular struggle against oppression but an exposé of the anti-people's history that has prevailed among generations of mainstream historians. It should be a critical history about a people's oppressors, those who propagated an elitist ideology and a loathing of the common people that distorts the historical record down to this day. ~ Michael Parenti

But we must come to realise that every word is perfect, including those we scratch out. As my pen moves across this page the whole world writes. All of human history combines at this mere moment now to produce in the flow of this hand a single dot: Who are you and I, dear friends, to contradict the whole past of the universe? Let us then in our wisdom say yes to the flow of the pen. ~ Luke Rhinehart

Every person under the sound of my voice is a soldier. You are either fighting for your freedom or betraying the fight for freedom or enlisted in the army to deny somebody else freedom. - Malcom X ~ Maya Angelou

History, as the study of the past, makes the coherence of what happened comprehensible by reducing events to a dramatic pattern and seeming them in a simple form. ~ Johan Huizinga

Out in the country it was not uncommon to discover that she had slipped away, alone, out to the lake, maybe, or down to the cellar, where once I found her sitting in the big marooned sleigh, reading, her fur coat thrown over her knees. Things would have been terrible strange and unbalanced without her. She was the Queen who finished out the suit of dark Jacks, dark King, and Joker. ~ Donna Tartt

Each day is a drive through history. ~ Jim Morrison

I want to make it clear that the black race did not come to the United States culturally empty-handed. The role and importance of ethnic history is in how well it teaches a people to use their own talents, take pride in their own history and love their own memories. ~ John Henrik Clarke

I suppose this work is part of the devil that is in us all. ~ Ulysses S. Grant

Perhaps Choices spring up when history makes way for them. Perhaps they will grow, like legends upon dead conquerors. ~ Roshani Chokshi

It's a big deal. ABC and MNF are a big part of NFL history, and it's going to end with the Super Bowl (on ABC). You can't say you're not looking forward to it . ~ John Madden

He broke me down past the flesh, past the muscle, past the bone, down to my soul and in a loud provocation, he asked, "What are you made of?"
After I gathered the broken bits and pieces of my life together, I shouted at the top of my lungs, "HOPE! Unbreakable, undeniable, irrevocable hope! ~ Jay Grewal

I never see a forest that does not bear a mark or a sign of history. ~ Anselm Kiefer

In order to witness clearly the march of humanity from its inception to the present moment, an understanding of how humankind has held encounter with the divine as central is crucial. Ancient humanity provides us with an excellent laboratory for gaining such an understanding. ~ Roger D. Woodard

America is a great country, built by great people - you know what made them great - the spirit of freedom and a disregard for binding tradition. ~ Abhijit Naskar

Nothing is more unpopular today than the free market economy, i.e., capitalism. Everything that is considered unsatisfactory in present-day conditions is charged to capitalism. The atheists make capitalism responsible for the survival of Christianity. But the papal encyclicals blame capitalism for the spread of irreligion and the sins of our contemporaries, and the Protestant churches and sects are no less vigorous in their indictment of capitalist greed. Friends of peace consider our wars as an offshoot of capitalist imperialism. But the adamant nationalist warmongers of Germany and Italy indicted capitalism for its "bourgeois" pacifism, contrary to human nature and to the inescapable laws of history. Sermonizers accuse capitalism of disrupting the family and fostering licentiousness. But the "progressives" blame capitalism for the preservation of allegedly outdated rules of sexual restraint. Almost all men agree that poverty is an outcome of capitalism. On the other hand many deplore the fact that capitalism, in catering lavishly to the wishes of people intent upon getting more amenities and a better living, promotes a crass materialism. These contradictory accusations of capitalism cancel one another. But the fact remains that there are few people left who would not condemn capitalism altogether. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

Only the most ingeniously optimistic, the most wilfully blind to the facts of history and psychology, can believe that paper guarantees of liberty - guarantees wholly unsupported by the realities of political and economic power - will be scrupulously respected by those who have known only the facts of governmental omnipotence on the one hand and, on the other, of mass dependence upon, and consequently subservience to, the state and its representatives. ~ Aldous Huxley

God took His time to carve out the perfect place, Sam remembered her grandma always saying.
Indeed, the hilltop was akin to a real cherry on top of a stunningly picturesque sundae. Bayview Point was home to two of northern Michigan's most popular orchards and tourist stops: Very Cherry Orchards and her family's Orchard and Pie Pantry. The first half of the hill was dense with rows of tart cherry trees, and the limbs of the small, bushy trees were bursting with cherries, red arms waving at Sam as if to greet her home.
In the spring, these trees were filled with white blossoms that slowly turned as pink as a perfect rosé, their beauty so tender that it used to make Sam's heart ache when she would run through the orchards as part of her high school cross-country training.
Often, when Sam ran, the spring winds would tear at the tender flowers and make it look as though it were snowing in the midst of a beautiful warm day.
Like every good native, Sam knew cherries had a long history in northern Michigan. French settlers had cherry trees in their gardens, and a missionary planted the very first cherry trees on Old Mission Peninsula.
Very Cherry Orchards grew nearly 100 acres of Montmorency tart cherries in addition to Balaton cherries, black sweet cherries, plums, and nectarines. They sold their fruit to U-Pickers as well as large companies that made pies, but they had also become famous for their tart cherry juice concentrate, now sold at grocery and healt ~ Viola Shipman

The Seascapes are before human beings and after human beings. The Seascapes were there before our presence, and when our civilization is over, seascapes will still exist. Our presence is temporary. Civilization is only 5,000 to 6,000 years. The history of ours, the material history of consciousness, is rather short. ~ Hiroshi Sugimoto

In history the way of annihilation is invariably prepared by inward degeneration, by decrease of life. Only then can a shock from outside put an end to the whole. ~ Jacob Burckhardt

I love Rambo but I think it's potentially a very dangerous movie. It changes history in a frightening way. ~ Steven Spielberg

That one record changed everything for me. After Sgt. Pepper, it's the most influential record in the history of rock and roll. It affected Pink Floyd deeply, deeply, deeply. Philosophically, other albums may have been more important, like Lennon's first solo album. But sonically, the way the record's constructed, I think Music from Big Pink is fundamental to everything that happened after it. ~ Roger Waters

Leon Uris is a storyteller, in a direct line from those men who sat around fires in the days before history and made the tribe more human. ~ Pete Hamill

The power of the deductive network produced in physics has been illustrated in a delightful article by Victor F. Weisskopf. He begins by taking the magnitudes of six physical constants known by measurement: the mass of the proton, the mass and electric charge of the electron, the light velocity, Newton's gravitational constant, and the quantum of action of Planck.

He adds three of four fundamental laws (e.g., de Broglie's relations connecting particle momentum and particle energy with the wavelength and frequency, and the Pauli exclusion principle), and shows that one can then derive a host of different, apparently quite unconnected, facts that happen to be known to us by observation separately .... ~ Gerald Holton

What should I say? 'Well, the murder was a little upsetting, and the fire did worry me a bit. I was nearly date-raped and my ex best friend is crazy. But, hey, at least I'm making an A in History'? ~ C.J. Daugherty

That's all a man can hope for during his lifetime – to set an example – and when he is dead, to be an inspiration for history. ~ William McKinley

Some people actually said I fell off at Nellyville cause I didn't sell as many as Country Grammar. I'm like are you kidding me? Sweat and Suit? I broke history, I was the first rapper to have 1st and 2nd album at the same time ever on billboard. ~ Nelly

History is a relentless master. It has no present, only the past rushing into the future. To try to hold fast is to be swept aside. ~ John F. Kennedy