Big History Quotes

I was a big history buff as a teenager. ~ Cary Fukunaga

We are capable of big lives. A big history. Why settle? Why choose the practical thing, the mundane thing? We are born to dream and make the things we dream about. ~ Nicola Yoon

The economy of early hominids and that of twenty-first century society have enormous differences, but they do share one important feature: in both of these economies, humans accumulate information in objects. Our world is different from that of early hominids only in the way in which atoms are arranged. ~ Cesar Hidalgo

I'm actually writing history. It isn't what you'd call big history. I don't write about presidents and generals ... I write about the man who was ranching, the man who was mining, the man who was opening up the country. ~ Louis L'Amour

Australia has a very big history of incarceration. What does that mean to us? What does it mean that we came over to a country that's not necessarily ours and filled it with white prisoners? ~ Yael Stone

Big History studies the history of everything, offering a way of making sense of our world and our role within it. ~ David Christian

I believe human beings mark a threshold in the development of the planet, of course, but it is only part of the picture. What Big History can do is show us the nature of our complexity and fragility and the dangers that face us, but it can also show us our power, with collective learning. ~ David Christian

If you're someone who genuinely believes that women don't deserve or aren't as much as men, you're like the plague. On the big history chart, you're the plague ... It's just pointless and deadly. ~ Joss Whedon

I'm a big history buff so to walk the streets ... the ancient world like that was pretty astounding. ~ Leonardo DiCaprio

I've always been a relatively big history buff. In college, I took a lot of history courses, and when I was in grad school, I liked to audit them. ~ Scott Snyder

Our goal is to see Big History become a normal part of high school curricula. I'd love to see it being taught in lots of languages. A global course. ~ David Christian

I think people are frustrated with dysfunction, not just dysfunction in government, but a lot of dysfunction that surrounds them. I get the frustration with drugs in the neighborhood or my kids with big college loans can't find a job. ~ John Kasich

It is from small streams that big rivers rise. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

And on and on it went-that duet between the dumb, praying lady and the big, hollow man who was so full of loving echoes. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

Witnessing all of those hardworking female street vendors in Vietnam also made me understand why my mom felt so passionate about me and my sisters working. While we were in Vietnam together, she explained that the country had a history of always being in wartime, so women were expected to rise to the occasion of making money for the family. Vietnamese women were always ready to take over roles traditionally filled by men, Like A League of Their Own (but where everyone is Marla Hooch). I also understood why my mom wasn't into processing her feelings, and how she was taught to just get over tragedy. To survive, she had to believe things like depression and allergies were a choice. In a culture entrenched in wartime, those who chose to be unhappy or to refuse gluten didn't last long. ~ Ali Wong

I feel like we were the last generation, and there's this big divide before and after the 1990s. I feel sorry for the kids today. It's all too much. ~ Chloe Sevigny

With a rumble and a roar, an iron curtain is descending on Russian history. ~ Vasily Rozanov

You know I love a good family feud and I carry a big stick. ~ Kami Garcia

Indeed, the Englishman's history of New England commences only when it ceases to be New France. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Did you know that when you plead insanity, you're not telling the jury that you're innocent? Nope. What you're really saying, in legalese, is not what you appear to be saying in human talk. You're not saying "I'm innocent because I'm crazy." No sir. What you're really saying is "I'll concede that I'm guilty as hell. But I don't deserve to go to jail because I'm crazy." Big difference there. Trust me. ~ Bryan James

About every six to eight months, I run into a man who astounds me sexually, but between escapades, I'm celibate, which I don't think is any big deal. After two unsuccessful marriages, I find myself keeping my guard up, along with my underpants. ~ Sue Grafton

In the 1970s, I bought some cheap horses, then decided that if I was going to be in it, I was going to go big time. So in 2001, Bill Casner, a partner with me in Excel, and I bought a breeding farm, WinStar Farm, together. ~ Kenny Troutt

The unsolved problems of the physical world now seem even more formidable than those solved in the twentieth century.

Though in application it works splendidly, we do not even understand the physical meaning of quantum mechanics, much less how it might be united with general relativity.

We don't know why the dimensionless constants (ratios of masses of elementary particles, ratios of strength of gravitational to electric forces, fine structure constant, etc.) have the values they do, unless we appeal to the implausible anthropic principle, which seems like a regression to Aristotelian teleology. ~ Gerald Holton

And that's the terrible thing about these past trials, is that they have this aura of legitimacy, this aura of legality. I suspect that better men than the world has known and more of them, have gone to their deaths through a legal system than through all the illegalities in the history of man.

Six million people in Europe during the Third Reich? Legal.

Sacco Vanzetti? Quite legal.

The Haymarket defendants? Legal.

The hundreds of rape trials throughout the South where black men were condemned to death? All legal.

Jesus? Legal.

Socrates? Legal.

And that is the kaleidoscopic nature of what we live through here and in other places. Because all tyrants learn that it is far better to do this thing through some semblance of legality than to do it without that pretense. ~ William M. Kunstler

He pretended to stretch his arms, in order to shift even closer to her. (This isn't in the history books, of course, but we'd like to point out that this was the first time a young man had ever tried that particular arm-stretch move on a young woman. Edward was the inventor of the arm stretch, a tactic that teenage boys have been using for centuries.) ~ Cynthia Hand

I'll always remember the day Daddy took me on a journey . . . the day history was made with one million men and me. ~ Kelly Starling Lyons

I come from a big family of storytellers and, growing up, I liked hearing about the years before I was born. ~ Molly Antopol

Everyone wanted to create his own history. There was nothing as powerful as the written word; history had taught them all that much. ~ Ted Dekker

Manhattan Community College had not one course on Peurto Rican history. The Peurto Rican sisters and brothers who knew what was happening became our teachers ... once you understand something about the history of a people, their heroes, their hardships, and their sacrifices, it's easier to struggle with them. To support their struggle. For a lot of peole in this country, people who live in other places have no faces. And this is the way the U.S. government wants it to be. They figure as long as the people have no faces and the country has no form, amerikans will not protest when they send in the marines to wipe them out. ~ Assata Shakur

Memoirs are the backstairs of history. ~ George Meredith

I've never had any real big blow-ups. I go against the grain. Hey, it's life, I'm happy. ~ Jermaine Jackson

The big, blazing truth about man is that he has a heaven-sized hole in his heart, and nothing else can fill it. We pass our lives trying to fill the Grand Canyon with marbles. As Augustine said: Thou hast made us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee. ~ Peter Kreeft

The Phoenicians are entitled to be commemorated in history by the side of the Hellenic and Latin nations; but their case affords a fresh proof, and perhaps the strongest proof of all, that the development of national energies in antiquity was of a one-sided character. ~ Theodor Mommsen

Try not to wet yourself with excitement, you big nerd. ~ Talia Hibbert

I had a lot of guilt and shame when I was running from God, but nothing like when I was running for God. I was always looking for God's approval, and that's where the guilt and shame came out in a big way. ~ Jud Wilhite

There is always some accident in the best things, whether thoughts or expressions or deeds. The memorable thought, the happy expression, the admirable deed are only partly ours. ~ Henry David Thoreau

In my experience , big words ornament bad news. ~ Roshani Chokshi

The only place you and I disagree is with regard to the bombing. You're so goddamned concerned about the civilians, and I (in contrast) don't give a damn. I don't care." ... "I'd rather use the nuclear bomb ... Does that bother you? I just want you to think big. ~ Richard M. Nixon

Obviously, certain sins often may escape detection. Homosexuals who practice behind closed doors are out-of-bounds for the courts, of course, unless others witness their criminal behavior. Such behavior may not be dealt with by courts in history, but will be dealt with by God, either in history (e.g., AIDS) or eternity. The law that requires the death penalty for homosexual acts effectually drives the perversion of homosexuality underground, back to the closet, to the dark realm of shameful activity. ~ Gary DeMar

As a writer I have persisted in my uncertainty, alternating between novels which could charitably be considered literature and world reporting which by another stretch of objective standards might be called history. ~ James A. Michener

On the path of self-realization, there is no one big awakening, but many along the way of varying degrees: some small, some big; and each one
of them is like the lotus flower, which grows out of muddy
waters. ~ Ora Nadrich

We take it for granted that Jesus was not interested in political life: his mission was purely religious. Indeed we have witnessed ... the 'iconization' of the life of Jesus: 'This is a Jesus of hieratic, stereotyped gestures, all representing theological themes. In this way, the life of Jesus is no longer a human life, submerged in history, but a theological life
an icon. ~ Gustavo Gutierrez

The whole framework of the presidency is getting out of hand. It's come to the point where you almost can't run unless you can cause people to salivate and whip on each other with big sticks. You almost have to be a rock star to get the kind of fever you need to survive in American politics. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

Part of what I loved - and love - about being around older people is the tangible sense of history they embody. I'm interested in military history, for instance, because both my grandfathers fought in World War II. I'm interested in writing because one of those grandfathers wrote books. ~ Jon Meacham

About two million years ago, man appeared. He has become the dominant species on the earth. All other living things, animal and plant, live by his sufferance. He is the custodian of life on earth, and in the solar system. It's a big responsibility. ~ George Wald

Home isn't about how big the space is, but how we fill it. ~ Becky Albertalli

History is reticent about women who were common soldiers, who bore arms, belonged to regiments, and took part in battles on the same terms as men, though hardly a war has been waged without women soldiers in the ranks. ~ Stieg Larsson

Worship isn't destructive, Martin. I know that.
I don't. I only know it's the core of his life. What else has he got? He can hardly read. He knows no physics or engineering to make to world real for him. No paintings to show him how others have enjoyed it. No music except television jingles. No history except tales from a desperate mother. No friends. Not one kid to give him a joke, or make him know himself more moderately. He's a modern citizen for whom society doesn't exist. ~ Peter Shaffer

The prestige of the news is founded on the unstated assumption that our lives are forever poised on the verge of critical transformation thanks to the two driving forces of modern history: politics and technology. ~ Alain De Botton

He was a prisoner to the calendar, he realised, as we all were. He thought in little boxes that were to be ticked off and filled with things to do. Almost every day he thought back to what he had been doing ten years ago, twenty years ago, further. He lived in the past, by his diary. He was a history man, his head full of dead leaves. It was a form of reassurance, he knew. There were too many roads into the future and he didn't like not having a map for it.
("Wait") ~ Conrad Williams

I have chosen to use the terms lesbian existence and lesbian continuum because the word lesbianism has a clinical and limiting ring Lesbian existence suggests both the fact of the historical presence of lesbians and our continuing creation of the meaning of that existence I mean the term lesbian continuum to include a range - through each woman's life and throughout history - of woman-identified experience; not simply the fact that a woman has had or consciously desired genital sexual experience with another woman. If we expand it to embrace many more forms of primary intensity between and among women, including the sharing of a rich inner life, the bonding against male tyranny, the giving and receiving of practical and political support; if we can also hear in it such associations as marriage resistance and the 'haggard' behavior identified by Mary Daly (obsolete meanings 'intractable,' 'willful,' 'wanton,' and 'unchaste' a woman reluctant to yield to wooing') - we begin to grasp breadths of female history and psychology that have lain out of reach as a consequence of limited, mostly clinical, definitions of 'lesbianism.'

Lesbian existence comprises both the breaking of a taboo and the rejection of a compulsory way of life It is also a direct or indirect attack on male right of access to women But it is more than these, although we may first begin to perceive it as a form of nay-saying to patriarchy, an act or resistance It has of course included role playing, sel ~ Adrienne Rich

When your turn comes to jump into the Nothing, you too will be a nameless servant of power, with no will of your own. Who knows what use they will make of you? Maybe you'll help them persuade people to buy things they don't need, or hate things they know nothing about, or hold beliefs that make them easy to handle, or doubt the truths that might save them. Yes, you little Fantastican, big things will be done in the human world with your help, wars started, empires founded ... " " The human world is full of weak-minded people, who think they're as clever as can be and are convinced that it's terribly important to persuade even the children that Fantastica doesn't exist. Maybe they will be able to make good use of you. ~ Michael Ende

To identify a person as a Southerner suggests not only that her history is inescapable and formative but that it is also impossibly present. Southerners live uneasily at the nexus between myth and reality, watching the mishmash amalgam of sorrow, humility, honor, graciousness, and renegade defiance play out against a backdrop of profligate physical beauty. ~ Sally Mann

I don't know what the big issue is about a kiss with Neve Campbell in Wild Things. It's a role, and I think a bigger issue is made out of it. It was a part I took and it's what the character did, so I did it. ~ Denise Richards

We may be of the same family, but that is the very reason why we are not friends, for we are rivals for the throne. What quarrels are worse than family quarrels? ~ Philippa Gregory