Greek History Quotes

What the Greek called Kosmos was the image of a world that is not continuous but complete. Inevitably, then, the Greek man himself was not a series but a term.

What his philosophers occasionally told him on the subject they had heard, not experienced, and what a few brilliant minds in the Asiatic-Greek cities (such as Hipparchus and Aristarchus) discovered was rejected alike by the Stoic and by the Aristotelian, and outside a small professional circle not even noticed. ~ Oswald Spengler

Before Jerusalem
Now they've come before Jerusalem.
Passions, avarice, and ambition,
as well as their chivalrous pride
have swiftly slipped from their souls.
Now they've come before Jerusalem.
In their ecstasy and their devoutness
they've forgotten their quarrels with the Greeks;
they've forgotten their hatred of the Turks.
Now they've come before Jerusalem.
And the Crusaders, so daring and invincible, so vehement in their every march and onslaught,
are fearful and nervous and are unable
to go further; they tremble like small children,
and like small children weep, all weep,
as they behold the walls of Jerusalem. ~ Constantine P. Cavafy

He had put on the best-looking uniform that he could, thinking that...victory deserved the best-looking armour. ~ Xenophon

The Greeks who rhapsodized about democracy in their rhetoric rarely created democratic institutions. A few cities such as Athens occasionally attempted a system vaguely akin to democracy for a few years. These cities functioned as slave societies and were certainly not egalitarian or democratic in the Indian sense. ~ Jack Weatherford

In modern Greek history, there is a close relationship between national humiliation and political radicalization. ~ Christopher Hitchens

I do not see how one who is an enemy of the gods can run fast enough away, nor where he can flee to escape, nor what darkness could cover him, nor how he could find a position strong enough for refuge. For all things in all places are subject to the gods, and the power of the gods extends equally over everything. ~ Xenophon

I thought of Pericles' speech to the families of the Athenian war dead, in which he said, What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others. ~ Eric Greitens

So she [Eleanor Roosevelt] is an amazing First Lady. What other First Lady in U.S. history has ever written a book to criticize her husband's policies? ~ Blanche Wiesen Cook

I'm a total nerd, so I'm on my telescope, or I read a lot. I'm very inspired by ancient history. ~ Michelle Phan

French philosopher whom professional philosophers generally accord highest honors is Descartes. Montaigne and Pascal, Voltaire and Rousseau, Bergson and Sartre do not enjoy their greatest vogue among philosophers, and of these only Rousseau has had any considerable influence on the history of philosophy (through Kant and Hegel). ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

There has never been a period in American history when it made sense to be anti-government. We may not like certain elected officials, laws, or government programs; but government simply provides the framework with which the people provide order and necessities for themselves. ~ Michael Douglas Gilbert

A clearly written and passionately argued indictment of centuries of antisemitism that contributed to Nazi extermination of the Jews. Wilensky has read widely, thought deeply, and writes persuasively in placing the Holocaust into the larger context of the history of Western Christianity. What he concludes is deeply disturbing and must be confronted seriously by scholars and public alike. Six Million Crucifixions is an important book for our- - or any - age of religious conflict and intolerance. ~ Geoffrey Cocks

I pass over the toil and suffering and danger which attended the redemption and cultivation of their lands by the colonists, and turn to their civil condition and to the conduct and history of the government. ~ William H. Wharton

History proves that the winning forces are those who put survival first and killing second ~ Paul Tobin

Simplicity. Ah, that I can offer in abundance. ~ Philippa Gregory

History is the view from the cheap seats. Distance from the action provides a unique perspective; one can recognize the plays and appreciate the totality of certain events. ~ Debra Komar

Those who become mentally ill often have a history of chronic pain. ~ Gene Tierney

A Greek gentleman in a straw hat, standing absolutely motionless at a slight angle to the universe. ~ Peter Cave

History may not repeat itself but, as Mark Twain said, it does rhyme. ~ Paul Kriwaczek

I find three basic characteristics that fundamentally distinguish the novel in principle from other genres: (i) its stylistic three-dimensionality, which is linked with the multi-languaged consciousness realized in the novel; (2) the radical change it effects in the temporal coordinates of the literary image; (3) the new zone opened by the novel for structuring literary images, namely, the zone of maximal contact with the present (with contemporary reality) in all its openendedness.
These three characteristics of the novel are all organically interrelated and have all been powerfully affected by a very specific rupture in the history of European civilization: its emergence from a socially isolated and culturally deaf semipatriarchal society, and its entrance into international and interlingual contacts and relationships. ~ Mikhail Bakhtin

A historian is often only a journalist facing backwards. ~ Karl Kraus

Of such things, petty annoyance and aimless thrusts, is history made. ~ Isaac Asimov

It took us in this country 11 years to get from the Declaration of Independence to the Constitution. ~ Mitch McConnell

We find ourselves in the last of the three generations history chooses to repeat every now and then. The first generation needs a god, and so they invent one. The second erects temples to that god and tries to imitate him. And the third uses the marble from those temples to build brothels in which to worship their own greed, lust, and dishonesty. And that is why gods and heroes are always, inevitably, succeeded by mediocrities, cowards, and imbeciles. ~ Arturo Perez Reverte

There is no replay of yesterday. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

I believe the essence of translation lies in taking what is unsaid in a work from one language to another. Words have memories, a history of their own. There are no two words with exactly the same meaning. To recreate the unspoken in another language, one needs to understand what went into making the original; then one must dismantle it and rebuild it in the other language. ~ Vivek Shanbhag

In schoolbooks and in literature we can separate ecclesiastical and political history; in the life of mankind they are intertwined. ~ Leopold Von Ranke

Women have always been healers. They were the unlicensed doctors and anatomists. They were abortionists, nurses and counselors. They were the pharmacists, cultivating healing herbs, and exchanging the secrets of their uses. They were midwives, traveling from home to home and village to village. For centuries women were doctors without degrees, barred from books and lectures, learning from each other, and passing on experience from neighbor to neighbor and mother to daughter. They were called "wise women" by the people, witches or charlatans by the authorities. Medicine is part of our heritage as women, our history, our birthright. ~ Barbara Ehrenreich

Today, for most kids in the United States and Canada, kids' primary attachment is to other kids. "For the first time in history," Neufeld observes, "young people are turning for instruction, modeling, and guidance not to mothers, fathers, teachers, and other responsible adults but to people whom nature never intended to place in a parenting role - their own peers. . ~ Leonard Sax

I didn't know the history of this world or how it interacted with the history of mine. Oric, Sabrina, all of them had tried to tell me that my rules didn't apply here, that my laws of decency meant nothing. The culture was medieval or perhaps an "enlightened" plutocracy. The wars of Napoleon could be a living memory for their elders. Their social system could be traced back to Genghis Khan for all I knew. It ~ Daniel Potter

If you look at the history of music, you have classical composers, church music, pop music, etc. Music that's existed for centuries. I think there are some songs that are close to immortal. They will last longer than we will in this lifetime. ~ Mike Love

The Republic isn't as much fun as The Symposium. It's all long speeches, and nobody bursting in drunk to woo Socrates in the middle. ~ Jo Walton

The only thing that's really new is the history you don't know. ~ Harry Truman

Regarding the Economy & Taxation: America's most successful achievers do pay a higher share of the total tax burden. The top one percent income earners paid 18 percent of the total tax burden in 1981, and paid 25 percent in 1991. The bottom 50 percent of income earners paid only 8 percent of the total tax burden, and paid only 5 percent in 1991. History shows that tax cuts have always resulted in improved economic growth producing more tax revenue in the treasury. ~ Rush Limbaugh

Subjective time flows forward, the phenomenal self is embedded into this flow, an inner history unfolds. That it is why it is not a bubble, but a tunnel: There is movement in time. ~ Thomas Metzinger

Suicide may be a declaration of bankruptcy which passes judgement on a life as one long history of failures. But it is a history which also amounts at least to this one decision which, by its very finality, is not wholly a failure. Some kind of minimal freedom - the freedom to die in one's own way and in one's own time - has been salvaged from the wreck of all those unwanted necessities. ~ Al Alvarez

If only every member of the family could have grown as straight and strong as Ann Garrity's beech tree. But as fate and genetics would have it, both sides of Fred and Alice Springsteen's lineage came with a shadow history of fractured souls. The drinkers and the failures, the wild-eyed, the ones who crumbled inside of themselves until they vanished altogether. These were the relatives who lived in rooms you didn't enter. Their stories were the ones that mustn't be told. They inspired the silence that both secreted and concentrated the poison in the family blood. Doug could already sense the venom creeping within himself. ~ Peter Ames Carlin

To us is given the honor of striking a blow for freedom which will live in history and in the better days that lie ahead men will speak with pride of our doings. ~ Bernard Law Montgomery

I am particularly horrified by the use of propaganda and the manipulation of the truth and the revision of history. ~ Hillary Clinton