European History Quotes

The greater and better parts of Christendom would be very wrong, seeing themselves presently governed by princesses whose natural intelligence, seasoned by long experience of good and bad fortune both in wars and domestic matters, have put a great many kings to shame. ~ Pierre De Rasnard

I am imprinted with the whole sense of European history, especially German history, going back to World War I, which really destroyed all the old values and culture. My grandparents had been reasonably well-off but they became quite poor, living in an attic apartment. ~ Lisel Mueller

Moreover, what is true for the history of antisemitism, that it fell into the hands of non-Jewish crackpots and Jewish apologetics, and was carefully avoided by reputable historians, is true, mutatis mutandis, for nearly all elements that later crystallized in the novel totalitarian phenomenon; they had hardly been noticed by either learned or public opinion because they belonged to a subterranean stream of European history where, hidden from the light of the public and the attention of enlightened men, they had been able to gather an entirely unexpected virulence. ~ Hannah Arendt

The bloody years of war and all the atrocities in European history have taught the Europeans that secular politics free of religious hatred is mainly a question of peace. This concept is not anchored in the same way in the consciousness of Turks, which has to do with the fact that the secular was forced upon us by the army. ~ Orhan Pamuk

[Luchino] Visconti came from the Milanese branch of one of Europe's oldest families, whose roots can be traced back to the early 13th century. He might have appeared as a character in one of his own films about the aristocracy, such as Senso or The Leopard – that's the life he was born into. But at a certain point in the 1930s, his passion for theatre, opera and the cinema set him on a radically different path.

(...)

He has often been referred to as a great political artist, but that's too limiting and frozen a description. His sense of European history was vast and he knew the lives of the rich and powerful first hand – but at a certain point he became drawn to understand the other side of life, that of the poor and powerless. He had a strong sense of the particular manner in which absolutely everyone, from the Sicilian fishermen in his neorealist classic La Terra Trema to the Venetian aristocrats in Senso, was affected by the grand movements of history. ~ Martin Scorsese

I would love to go back to any time in European history, especially in Irish history, to the second or third century, prior to the arrival of Christianity when Paganism flourished. I can always go back there in my imagination, of course. It doesn't cost anything, and it's a form of time travel, I suppose. ~ Gabriel Byrne

The euro pleases dispirited people for whom European history is not Chartres and Shakespeare but the Holocaust and the Somme. The euro expresses cultural despair. ~ George Will

Of course, in the reality of history, the Machiavellian view which glorifies the principle of violence has been able to dominate.Not the compromising conciliatory politics of humaneness, not the Erasmian, but rather the politics of vested power which firmly exploits every opportunity, politics in the sense of the "Principe," has determined the development of European history ever since. ~ Stefan Zweig

I see myself as, first and above all, a teacher of history; next, a writer of European history; next, a commentator on European affairs; next, a public intellectual voice within the American left; and only then an occasional, opportunistic participant in the pained American discussion of the Jewish matter. ~ Tony Judt

With dozens of course offerings, UCLA's history department doesn't have a single course on the French Revolution, or even a course that would seem to cover Western Europe during that period. There are courses on European history in the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries, as well as from 1450 to 1660. And there's a Western Civilization class covering the period up to 1715. But if you want to know what was happening outside of the United States circa 1750 to 1800, ~ Ann Coulter

Starting with the Renaissance and running through the Enlightenment, there occurred what we might call "the great reversal." Suddenly, very suddenly, the Ascenders were out, the Descenders were in - and the transition was bloody, arguably the bloodiest cognitive transformation in European history. ~ Ken Wilber

The temporary alliance between the elite and the mob rested largely on this genuine delight with which the former watched the latter destroy respectability. This could be achieved when the German steel barons were forced to deal with and to receive socially Hitler's the housepainter and self-admitted former derelict, as it could be with the crude and vulgar forgeries perpetrated by the totalitarian movements in all fields of intellectual life, insofar as they gathered all the subterranean, nonrespectable elements of European history into one consistent picture. From this viewpoint it was rather gratifying to see that Bolshevism and Nazism began even to eliminate those sources of their own ideologies which had already won some recognition in academic or other official quarters. Not Marx's dialectical materialism, but the conspiracy of 300 families; not the pompous scientificality of Gobineau and Chamberlain, but the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion"; not the traceable influence of the Catholic Church and the role played by anti-clericalism in Latin countries, but the backstairs literature about the Jesuits and the Freemasons became the inspiration for the rewriters of history. The object of the most varied and variable constructions was always to reveal history as a joke, to demonstrate a sphere of secret influences of which the visible, traceable, and known historical reality was only the outward façade erected explicitly to fool the people.

To this aversion of the ~ Hannah Arendt

Look at the chaos of European history. Europeans cannot believe in certainty. But Americans believe in certainty. Americans think this can go on like this forever. Just as it is. No change. ~ Carl Andre

From Caesar's legions to the Napoleonic wars. From the Reformation, the Enlightenment and the industrial revolution to the defeat of nazism. We have helped to write European history, and Europe has helped write ours. ~ David Cameron

Every person comes with a place. It can be a house, a park, a building. When you meet someone, you are unknowingly meeting a place, a two-for-one deal that neither party is really aware of yet. Regular Joe's is Marcus' place. Mine is the library, second floor, nonfiction, the table between the Poker aisle and European History. Two-thousand days of friendship means that we share. ~ Chloe Rattray

Although the pineapple had been widely disseminated for centuries among the native peoples of South and Central America, it didn't figure in European history until 1493. ~ Kate Christensen

Hettites appeal to us not alone because of the influence they once exercised on the fortunes of the Chosen People, not alone because a Hittite was the wife of David and the ancestress of Christ, but also on account of the debt which the civilisation of our own Europe owes to them. Our culture is the inheritance we have received from ancient Greece, and the first beginnings of Greek culture were derived from the Hittite conquerors of Asia Minor ... The Hittites carried the time-worn civilisations of Babylonia and Egypt to the furthest boundary of Asia, and there handed them over to the West in the grey dawn of European history. ~ A.H. Sayce

The conflict with Islam has, after all, existed throughout European history. ~ Walter Kasper

The art of Europe is drowned in the centuries in the war-scarred face of a motherland.. ~ John Geddes

India is often said to be the most diverse country on Earth. And diversity worked so well there that its eastern and western provinces split off into Pakistan and Bangladesh amid oceans of blood. According to the map in a Daily Mail article titled 'Worlds Apart,' Africa is the most ethnically diverse continent on Earth, yet it continues to eat itself alive due to ongoing tribal conflicts that may have been exploited by colonialists but that existed long before Europeans ever set foot in Africa and have persisted - and even escalated - once the colonialists began their slow retreat. European history is replete with homicidal group conflicts that may on their surface appear to have been rooted in religion or ideology but were more deeply entwined with things such as cultural, linguistic, and phenotypical differences. ~ Jim Goad

We have seen and do see the type of evil that is within human civilization, and the Holocaust took place in European history during an advanced state of technology and form of civilization, only to become an event in that history that questioned what civilization actually means. ~ Laszlo Nemes

I was exhausted and had to rely on Herr Schreiner to help me and knew in my soul that God had sent him to my aid. As tired as I was, I couldn't have handled my luggage alone. Finally another train did pull into the station but in stark contrast to the empty platform we were standing on, the train was completely full of people. Although he wasn't that big of a man, Herr Schreiner pushed my suitcases up the two steps into the railway car, and I climbed up behind them. As the train left the station, he hung onto the two entrance handles right behind me and I pushed for space, trying to make enough room for him to get into the carriage. With every surge of the train I expected him to lose his grip but with what I am certain was superhuman strength, he hung on as the train picked up speed. Several of the people made snide remarks but I turned a deaf ear to this and pushed as hard as I could, so that he could also get in. With the help of another man pulling on his coat, Herr Schreiner finally managed to squeeze in far enough so that we could close the door behind him. Once safely on the train, someone from his school in Mannheim recognized him. Herr Schreiner had been a very popular, much admired school principal and seeing how tired and bedraggled we now looked, the passenger offered us his window seats and helped to make room so that we could store our suitcases in the luggage rack above our heads. The train didn't make any more stops and continued east crossing the Rhine River ~ Hank Bracker

Perhaps enlightenment, technology and secularism haven't cleared Europe of the oldest science of all - the occult. ~ Adam Nevill

There have been two great narcotics in European civilisation: Christianity and alcohol. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

John Paul II, above all, managed to contain the huge mass of frustration, of hate that had accumulated in that region, in favour of a peaceful transition. This was, without doubt, something that changed European history. ~ Rocco Buttiglione

Wanna go study about incestuous royal families and bloody murders?' she asked him. 'Or do you wanna study European history instead? ~ Robin Benway

It's all there, it's all waiting. Of course it can be done; it depends upon ourselves.

You say: "But again, we're scattered individuals. Everything's against us. Governments, money, press, television - all the new forces are used against us." All the great forces, all the material powers of the world, you say, are against you. And so they are - you're quite right to feel that.

And I don't underrate them, but I don't despair and you shouldn't despair. Because you, like I, have read something of history. You know something of the record of the achievement of Europeans. And dark as this hour is, it's no darker, it's not as dark as some of the hours you've known in European history.

When everything was cowardice, treachery, and betrayal. And when the Saracen hordes from far outside Europe swept right across that continent, and would've come on over our own Britain too, if they hadn't been stopped. And it didn't only happen once, it's happened more than once.

Small bands of men in resolution, in absolute determination, giving themselves completely and saying "Europe shall live!" And they stood firm and faced the menace to Europe: its values, its civilizations, the glory of its achievement - all those things in mortal danger. And they stood firm, they faced it, they came together, and more and more ran it to their standards, and those hordes were thrown back. Again and again and again, our Europe lived in triumph because the will of Euro ~ Oswald Mosley

Rosewater was twice as smart as Billy, but he and Billy were dealing with similar crises in similar ways. They had both found life meaningless, partly because of what they had seen in war. Rosewater, for instance, had shot a fourteen-year-old fireman, mistaking for a German soldier. So it goes. And Billy had seen the greatest massacre in European history, which was the fire-bombing of Dresden. So it goes.
So they were trying to re-invent themselves and their universe. Science fiction was a big help. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

I have a degree in European history, which didn't necessarily have any direct impact on my career, but I'm grateful I studied something other than acting in college. ~ Becki Newton

We don't need to learn about European History in African Schools around the continent, for the media reminds us that every day is EUROPEAN HISTORY. ~ Henry Johnson Jr

Cribbage!" I declared, pulling out the board, a deck of cards, and pen and paper, "Ben and I are going to teach you. Then we can all play."
"What makes you think I don't know how to play cribbage?" Sage asked.
"You do?" Ben sounded surprised.
"I happen to be an excellent cribbage player," Sage said.
"Really…because I'm what one might call a cribbage master," Ben said.
"I bet I've been playing longer than you," Sage said, and I cast my eyes his way. Was he trying to tell u something?
"I highly doubt that," Ben said, "but I believe we'll see the proof when I double-skunk you."
"Clearly you're both forgetting it's a three-person game, and I'm ready to destroy you both," I said.
"Deal 'em," Ben said.
Being a horse person, my mother was absolutely convinced she could achieve world peace if she just got the right parties together on a long enough ride. I didn't know about that, but apparently cribbage might do the trick. I didn't know about that, but apparently cribbage might do the trick. The three of us were pretty evenly matched, and Ben was impressed enough to ask sage how he learned to play. Turned out Sage's parents were historians, he said, so they first taught him the precursor to cribbage, a game called noddy.
"Really?" Ben asked, his professional curiosity piqued. "Your parents were historians? Did they teach?"
"European history. In Europe," Sage said. "Small college. They taught me a lot."
Yep, there was the met ~ Hilary Duff

There is of course a deep spiritual need which the pilgrimage seems to satisfy, particularly for those hardy enough to tackle the journey on foot. ~ Edwin Mullins

am the part of your history.. ~ Sakhiabbas

Of All the Gin Joints is one part cinematic history, one part old Hollywood weirdness, and one part handy basic bar guide, with a dash of romance and more than a few wry twists. Bailey and Hemingway prove themselves very entertaining cultural mixologists. ~ Sam Lipsyte

What would we not give for some great poem to read now, which would be in harmony with the scenery,
for if men read aright, methinks they would never read anything but poems. No history nor philosophy can supply their place. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Most of life on Earth has a deep past, much deeper than ours. And we have benefited from the distillation of all preceding history, call it evolutionary history if you will. ~ Sylvia Earle

There's a history of English literature where the best boils to the top, and Jane Austen stands right at the top of that. ~ JJ Feild

Learn from examples in history lest thou be made an example ~ John Boys

Jane, I don't care what capacity you let me have in your life. I just want to be there. And if that means I have to keep my distance, I'll do that."
I sighed. If ever there was a time for me to lay all my cards on the table, this was it. Naked, wounded, and vulnerable. "So, here's my basic
problem with us, the reason I can't seem to relax into a relationship with you, the reason I find problems where none exist and I push you away. I - I can't figure out why you're with me!" I exclaimed, clapping my hand over my mouth. I hadn't meant for that part to come out. I had meant to say, "You lie and hide things from me."

Gabriel pried my fingers away from my lips. My hands trembled as stuff I'd been feeling for months tumbled from my tongue. "I know that
makes me neurotic and sad, but I can't figure out why you want to be with me. Every other woman in your life is exotic and beautiful and has all this history. And I'm just some drunk girl you followed home from a bar, some pathetic human you felt your usual need to protect, and you got stuck with a lifetime tie to her because she was dumb enough to get shot. I can't stand the idea that you feel obligated to me. I know I'm insecure and pushy and spastic, desperately inappropriate at times and just plain odd at others. And I can't help but wonder why you would want that when there are obviously so many other options. I can't help but feel that I'm keeping you from someone better."
I let out a loud, long ~ Molly Harper

Given everything we know about the universe it would seem utterly impossible for any sane person to believe that the ultimate truth about the universe and human existence is the story of Israeli, German or Russian nationalism – or indeed of nationalism in general. A story that ignores almost the whole of time, the whole of space, the Big Bang, quantum physics and the evolution of life is at most just a tiny part of the truth. Yet people somehow manage not to see beyond it.
Indeed, billions of people throughout history have believed that for their lives to have meaning, they don't even need to be absorbed into a nation or a great ideological movement. It is enough if they just 'leave something behind', thereby ensuring that their personal story continues beyond their death. The 'something' I leave behind is ideally my soul or my personal essence. If I am reborn in a new body after the death of my present body, then death is not the end. It is merely the space between two chapters, and the plot

"that began in one chapter will carry on into the next. Many people have at least a vague faith in such a theory, even if they do not base it on any specific theology. They don't need an elaborate dogma – they just need the reassuring feeling that their story continues beyond the horizon of death. ~ Yuval Noah Harari

My college roommate gave me her copy of 'Lord of the Rings,' and I read that probably five or six times - not because I think it's the greatest thing ever written, though some people certainly think it is - but the world he creates is so vivid. So real that he designed its own languages, history and mythology. ~ Carol Berg

Truly a good horse, good ground to gallop on, and sunshine, make up the sum of enjoyable travelling. ~ Isabella L. Bird

The point of that is, if you look at Walgreen's history, they've always been pioneers in the application of technology. They're the only drugstore chain that I know to have their own satellite. ~ James Collins

Every progress made by Satan and every technological breakthrough in human history occurs because God allowed it; God created Satan and God is in complete control of everything. Job 1:6-12 ~ Felix Wantang

The philosophy of praxis does not aim at the peaceful resolution of existing contradictions in history and society, but is the very theory of these contradictions. It is not the instrument of government of the dominant groups in order to gain the consent and exercise hegemony over the subaltern classes. It is the expression of subaltern classes who want to educate themselves in the art of government and who have an interest in knowing all truths, even the unpleasant ones, and in avoiding the impossible deceptions of the upper class, and even more their own. ~ Antonio Gramsci

How solemn and beautiful is the thought, that the earliest pioneer of civilization, the van-leader of civilization, is never the steamboat, never the railroad, never the newspaper, never the Sabbath-school, never the missionary - but always whiskey! Such is the case. Look history over; you will see. The missionary comes after the whiskey - I mean he arrives after the whiskey has arrived; next comes the poor immigrant, with ax and hoe and rifle; next, the trader; next, the miscellaneous rush; next, the gambler, the desperado, the highwayman, and all their kindred in sin of both sexes; and next, the smart chap who has bought up an old grant that covers all the land; this brings the lawyer tribe; the vigilance committee brings the undertaker. All these interests bring the newspaper; the newspaper starts up politics and a railroad; all hands turn to and build a church and a jail - and ~ Mark Twain

Look, history is interesting. I read three books on George Washington last year. And my opinion is that if they're still analyzing the first president, the 43rd president ought to be doing what he thinks is right. And eventually, historians will come and realize whether ... the decisions I made made sense. ~ George W. Bush

Lack of courage or means often deters the European woman from more independent business activity, and this in spite of increasing freedom to choose her occupation, in spite of brilliant examples of successful undertakings of women, in photography, hotel or boarding-house management, dress-making, etc. ~ Ellen Key

No doubt Carlyle has a propensity to exaggerate the heroic in history, that is, he creates you an ideal hero rather than another thing ... Yet what were history if he did not exaggerate it? How comes it that history never has to wait for facts, but for a man to write it? The ages may go on forgetting the facts never so long, he can remember two for every one forgotten. The musty records of history, like the catacombs, contain the perishable remains, but only in the breast of genius are embalmed the souls of heroes. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Paradox is an overrated threat. There is ... a quality similar to inertia at work. Once an event has occurred, there is an extremely strong tendency for that event to occur. The larger, more significant, or more energetic the event, the more it tends to remain as it originally happened, despite any interference."
I frowned. "There's ... a law of conservation of history? ~ Jim Butcher

Despite its obscurity, probably no element on the periodic table has as colorful a history as antimony. Money, madness, poison, linguistics, charlatanism, sex - pretty much every theme that runs through the periodic table can be found in Element 51. ~ Sam Kean

As he enters his final term, with the elegiac music playing out there in the distance, Barack Obama will use the history that he has come to embody and, perhaps, even to fulfill, as part of a larger project that never will be completed but only finished, over and over again. ~ Charlie Pierce

In my dream I drank fully of water, but when I woke, I was thirsty. Ned Low ~ Patricia Goodwin

Everything must justify its existence before the judgment seat of Reason, or give up existence. ~ Friedrich Engels

In popular government results worth while can only be achieved by men who combine worthy ideals with practical good sense. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

They inhabited a lost world of splendour and brutality, a world dominated by religious change, in which there were few saints. ~ Alison Weir

If history reveals any categorical truth, it is that an insufficient taste for evidence regularly brings out the worst in us. Add weapons of mass destruction to this diabolical clockwork, and you have ... a recipe for the fall of civilization. ~ Sam Harris

The ultimate vision is to instate in the Muslim world the notion of multiculturalism, which is part of our heritage and history, part of the fundamental, mainstream ideals of Islam. ~ Feisal Abdul Rauf

More to the point, what was the lesson that the first Christians drew from crucifixion? Today such a barbarity might galvanize people into opposing brutal regimes, or demanding that such torture never again be inflicted on a living creature. But those weren´t the lessons the early Christians drew at all. No, the execution of Jesus is The Good News, a necessary step in the most wonderful episode in history. In allowing the crucifixion to take place, God did the world an incalculable favor. Though infinitely powerful, compassionate, and wise, he could think of no other way to reprieve humanity from punishment for its sins (in particular, for the sin of being descended from a couple who had disobeyed him) that to allow, an innocent man (his son no less) to be impaled through the limbs and slowly suffocate in agony. By acknowledging that this sadistic murder was a gift of divine mercy, people could earn eternal life. And if they failed to see the logic in all this, their flesh would be seared by fire for all eternity. ~ Steven Pinker

Maybe if people started to listen, history would stop repeating itself. ~ Lily Tomlin

Let's go beyond the Trinity of African-American History. There are so many more to learn about other than Harriett Tubman, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Rosa Parks. ~ Karimah Grayson

Our early lessons in love and our developmental history shape the expectations we bring into marriage. ~ Judith Viorst

by considering what has happened in East Timor since 1975, we can learn some important things about ourselves, our society, and our institutions. If we do not like what we find when we look at the facts - and few will fail to be appalled if they take an honest look - we can work to bring about changes in the practices and structure of institutions that cause terrible suffering and slaughter. To the extent that we see ourselves as citizens in a democratic community, we have a responsibility to devote our energies to these ends. The recent history of Timor provides a revealing insight into the policies of the U.S. government, ~ Noam Chomsky

In the beginning was the Word. Then came the fucking word processor. Then came the thought processor. Then came the death of literature. And so it goes. ~ Dan Simmons

I don't think there's any deep psychological reason. It isn't comparable, say, to America's involvement with Vietnam and the emotional scars that that has left behind. A much more cogent way of looking at it is that the British have suddenly realized that they have their own equivalent of the perennial western. We have an immense, extremely colorful, diverse history of the empire, and I think people are just beginning to realize that there are jolly good stories there for the telling. ~ Valerie Fitzgerald

Immigration, exile, being uprooted and made a pariah may be the most effective way yet devised to impress on an individual the arbitrary nature of his or her own existence. Who needed a shrink of a guru when everyone we met asked us who we were the moment we opned our mouths and they heard the accent?

The truth is, we had no simple answers. Being rattled around in freight trains, open trucks, and ratty ocean-liners, we ended up being a puzzle even to ourselves. At first, that was hard to take; then we got used to the idea. We began to savor it, to enjoy it. Being nobody struck me personally as being far more interesting than being somebody. The streets were full of these "somebodys" putting on confident airs. Half the time I envied them; half the time I looked down on them with pity. I knew something they didn't, something hard to come by unless history gives you a good kick in the ass: how superfluous and insignificant in any grand scheme mere individuals are. And how pitiless are those who have no understanding that this could be their fate too. ~ Charles Simic

I bet in the All-Time History of Dating no girl has ever told a boy who has just asked her out that she has fleas-and then farted! ~ Zoe Sugg

Ultimately, love is only possible for humans insofar as they can achieve some comprehension of their place and their duties and their values and their significance within the whole of life, of society, of spirituality, of history, of nature. In all merely partial or fragmentary perspectives, there necessarily remain undigested irrational factors, surds that one is merely tolerating and not truly respecting as essential and integral to the whole of what we are. ~ Kenny Smith