History Textbooks Quotes

At many points during our nation's history, there have been times - known in our history textbooks as 'panics' - when adverse conditions affecting the financial and economic sectors of the country have caused individuals to hoard more than they need. ~ Jo Bonner

Consider a white ninth-grade student taking American history in a predominantly middle-class town in Vermont. Her father tapes Sheetrock, earning an income that in slow construction seasons leaves the family quite poor. Her mother helps out by driving a school bus part-time, in addition to taking care of her two younger siblings. The girl lives with her family in a small house, a winterized former summer cabin, while most of her classmates live in large suburban homes. How is this girl to understand her poverty? Since history textbooks present the American past as four hundred years of progress and portray our society as a land of opportunity in which folks get what they deserve and deserve what they get, the failures of working-class Americans to transcend their class origin inevitably get laid at their own doorsteps. ~ James W. Loewen

It's a shame for women's history to be all about men
first boys, then other boys, then men men men. It reminds me of the way our school history textbooks were all about wars and elections, one war after another, with the dull periods of peace skimmed over whenever they occurred. (Our teachers deplored this and added extra units about social history and protest movements, but that was still the message of the books.) ~ Elizabeth Kostova

We assume that anything that is new to us is new to human society as a whole, and that if we don't see it reflected in history textbooks and in recent memory then it cannot have existed for long. ~ C.N. Lester

The religious foundations of America have been completely expurgated from our history textbooks. ~ D. James Kennedy

Early American speeches, from Washington's to Patrick Henry's, have been detheologized in history textbooks. No one has called it censorship. ~ James G. Watt

It's a shame for a woman's history to be all about men-first boys, then other boys, then men, men, men. It reminds me of the way our school history textbooks were all about wars and elections, one war after another, with the dull periods of peace skimmed over when they happened. ~ Elizabeth Kostova

The Temple of Dendur," Zia said. "Actually it was built by the Romans - "
"When they occupied Egypt," Carter said, like this was delightful information. "Augustus commissioned it."
"Yes," Zia said.
"Fascinating," I murmured. "Would you two like to be left alone with a history textbook? ~ Rick Riordan

Textbooks in American history stand in sharp contrast to other teaching materials. Why are history textbooks so bad? Nationalism is one of the culprits. Textbooks are often muddled by the conflicting desires to promote inquiry and to indoctrinate blind patriotism. "Take a look in your history book, and you'll see why we should be proud" goes an anthem often sung by high school glee clubs. But we need not even look inside. ~ James W. Loewen

The opposite of racism is antiracism, of course, or what we might call racial idealism or equalitarianism, and it is still not clear whether it will prevail. In this struggle, our history textbooks offer little help. Just as they underplay white racism, they also neglect racial idealism. In doing so, they deprive students of potential role models to call upon as they try to bridge the new fault lines that will spread out in the future from the great rift in our past. ~ James W. Loewen

History textbooks still present Union and Confederate sympathizers as equally idealistic. The North fought to hold the Union together, while the South fought, according to 'The American Way', 'for the preservation of their rights and the freedom to decide for themselves'. Nobody fought to preserve racial slavery; nobody fought to end it. As one result, unlike the Nazi swastika, which lies disgraced, even in the North whites still proudly display the stars and bars of the Confederacy on den walls, license plates, t-shirts, and high school logos. Even some (white) Northerners vaguely regret the defeat of the 'lost cause'. It is as if racism against blacks could be remembered with nostalgia. In this sense, long after Appomattox, the Confederacy finally won. ~ James W. Loewen

When history textbooks leave out the Arawaks, they offend Native Americans. When they omit the possibility of African and Phoenician precursors to Columbus, they offend African Americans. When they glamorize explorers such as de Soto just because they were white, our histories offend all people of color. When they leave out Las Casas, they omit an interesting idealist with whom we all might identify. When they glorify Columbus, our textbooks prod us toward identifying with the oppressor. When textbook authors omit the causes and process of European world domination, they offer us a history whose purpose must be to keep us unaware of the important questions. Perhaps worst of all, when textbooks paint simplistic portraits of a pious, heroic Columbus, they provide feel-good history that bores everyone. ~ James W. Loewen

I grew up on a farm with only two TV channels. I didn't grow up around much culture. When I got excited about painting, I never really got further than what would have been in a modern art history textbook. ~ Neil Farber

For it is better to drink a wholesome draught of truth from the humble vessel, than poison mixed with honey from a golden goblet. ~ Nennius

When blondes have more fun, do they know it? ~ Lois Greiman

Do they not deserve our attention, those armies of small-minded and low-graded people, drifting on the waves of their unawareness or misfortune, suffocating in their caves of bewilderment and fading into oblivion? Imminent counteractions might unchain an avalanche of social fallouts if they feel ignored or disregarded. Sheeple's rage is unpredictable and rampant. We must never fail to remember the lessons of history. ("Bread and Satellite") ~ Erik Pevernagie

The people of Texas are rightly proud of their own, just like the French and the Italians, but visiting artists have often been given a shot in the history of art. ~ Clifford Ross

IT is not impossible that among the English readers of this book there may be one who in 1915 and 1916 was in one of those trenches that were woven like a web among the ruins of Monchy-au-Bois. In that case he had opposite him at that time the 73rd Hanoverian Fusiliers, who wear as their distinctive badge a brassard with ' Gibraltar ' inscribed on it in gold, in memory of the defence of that fortress under General Elliot; for this, besides Waterloo, has its place in the regiment's history.

At the time I refer to I was a nineteen-year-old lieutenant in command of a platoon, and my part of the line was easily recognizable from the English side by a row of tall shell-stripped trees that rose from the ruins of Monchy. My left flank was bounded by the sunken road leading to Berles-au-Bois, which was in the hands of the English ; my right was marked by a sap running out from our lines, one that helped us many a time to make our presence felt by means of bombs and rifle-grenades.

I daresay this reader remembers, too, the white tom-cat, lamed in one foot by a stray bullet, who had his headquarters in No-man's-land. He used often to pay me a visit at night in my dugout. This creature, the sole living being that was on visiting terms with both sides, always made on me an impression of extreme mystery. This charm of mystery which lay over all that belonged to the other side, to that danger zone full of unseen figures, is one of the strongest impressions that the wa ~ Ernst Junger

The crowd pushes him back into Henry's chest, and after absolutely everything, all the emails and texts and months on the road and secret rendezvous and nights of wanting, the whole accidentally-falling-in-love-with-your-sworn-enemy-at-the-absolute-worst-possible-time thing, they made it. Alex said they would- he promised. Henry's smiling so wide and bright that Alex thinks his heart's going to break trying to hold the size of this entire moment, the completeness of it, a thousand years of history swelling inside his rib cage. ~ Casey McQuiston

There is not a truth to be gathered from history more certain, or more momentous, than this: that civil liberty cannot long be separated from religious liberty without danger, and ultimately without destruction to both. Wherever religious liberty exists, it will, first or last, bring in and establish political liberty. ~ Joseph Story

The trousers were miles too long, even when Peter cuffed the legs. The socks bagged in the ankles, and the shirt and sweater were equally large. But when Peter finally managed to get the collars to lie right and glanced at the reflection he'd carved out of the dust on James's mirror, a shock went through him.
This was the face which had haunted him all his life, the one he had looked in the eye on the day he left the Darling house for the last time. The hair, messy and short, enthusiastically curling without the weight of his old braid to drag it down. The stubborn chin. The clear, sharp, sullen eyes full of everything he had never been allowed to be.
Peter ran his hands over himself slowly, breathing tentatively, feeling the weight of his chest under his shirt. He had given this body up. He had thought it belonged to Wendy, to the girl he wasn't. He had let his family make him believe that the only way he would ever be a boy was to be born again in a different shape, leaving everything of his body and history behind.
He breathed out and settled in the feeling of being himself, of being something whole. ~ Austin Chant

The typical Irish peasant ate about 10 pounds of potatoes each day and soon towered in physical size over their rural English equivalents who mainly ate bread. ~ Rashers Tierney

History is indeed the witness of the times, the light of truth. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero

Physics has a history of synthesizing many phenomena into a few theories. ~ Richard P. Feynman

In Black Like Me, I tried to establish one simple fact, which was to reveal the insanity of a situation where a man is judged by his skin color, by his philosophical "accident" - rather than by who he is in his humanity. ~ John Howard Griffin

For me, life without literature is inconceivable. I think that Don Quixote in a physical sense never existed, but Don Quixote exists more than anybody who existed in 1605. Much more. There's nobody who can compete with Don Quixote or with Hamlet. So in the end we have the reality of the book as the reality of the world and the reality of history. ~ Carlos Fuentes

If you know a person's history, you can use it to help predict what that person might do. A person's history can be the key to understanding his motivation for committing a crime. ~ Julia Spencer-Fleming

The secret is to create the condition for change, a process that sometimes takes decades, and then use certain men as pivot points, a fulcrum to move history. ~ Robert Ferrigno

I've been lucky. I've had this history of having an appeal to more than one type of audience. ~ Juice Newton

P4- the history that now effects everyman is world history ~ C. Wright Mills

Ironworkers also settled in Detroit and Buffalo. They were, for the first time in the history of Native Americans, creating a new class--the urban Indian. ~ David Weitzman

Never forget, the world said after the Holocaust. But the world is forgetting. ~ E.J. Wood

We are privileged to live in, and if we are lucky to influence, one of the most critical epochs in the history of the human species. ~ Carl Sagan

Personally, I can't see the appeal in trekking down to D.C. for a networking extravaganza, even if it is built around a special moment in American history. While I find the election of Barack Obama inspirational, I don't have a desire to memorialize it with overly effusive celebration. ~ Jamie Johnson

History shows that people are as changeable as rivers. ~ Andres Neuman

Look on every exit as being an entrance somewhere else. ~ Tom Stoppard

Each civilization, each nation, each family, each profession, each sex and each class has its own history. Humans have so far been interested mainly in their own private roots, and have therefore never claimed the whole of the inheritance into which they were born, the legacy of everybody's past experience. Each generation searches only for what it thinks it lacks, and recognizes only what it knows already. ~ Theodore Zeldin

Now these ashes have grown cold, we open the old book.
These oil-stained pages recount the tales of the Fallen,
a frayed empire, words without warmth. The hearth
has ebbed, its gleam and life's sparks are but memories
against dimming eyes - what cast my mind, what hue my
thoughts as I open the Book of the Fallen
and breathe deep the scent of history?
Listen, then, to these words carried on that breath.
These tales are the tales of us all, again yet again.
We are history relived and that is all, without end that is all. ~ Steven Erikson

I was deeply disturbed by the meeting. If I couldn't do what I thought was necessary to take care of the troops, I didn't see how I could remain as secretary. I was in a quandary. I shared Obama's concerns about an open-ended conflict, and while I wanted to fulfill the troop requests of the commanders, I knew they always would want more - just like all their predecessors throughout history. How did you scale the size of the commitment to the goal? How did you measure risk? But I was deeply uneasy with the Obama White House's lack of appreciation - from the top down - of the uncertainties and inherent unpredictability of war. "They all seem to think it's a science," I wrote in a note to myself. I came closer to resigning that day than at any other time in my tenure, though no one knew it. During ~ Robert M. Gates

... History sometimes does know revenge, a sort of voluptuous and delayed justice, but chooses strange forms for it and unexpected executors of its will. ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Keep in mind that when we limit our exposure to information, or when information itself is scarce, our picture of reality suffers. We become oblivious to both opportunities and hazards. Trends become invisible. History disappears. It's really just two sides of the same coin: the first commitment is as much a commitment to gathering information, from as many sources and in as much volume as can constructively be used, as it is a commitment to facing the facts. ~ John Salka

The first gang members who joined the military were known as the Hounds, a group of former New York gang members. ~ Carter F. Smith

If the history of the past fifty years teaches us anything, it is that peace does not follow disarmament - disarmament follows peace. ~ Bernard Baruch

[What is honor] - I suspect that if, after reading this book, you were to go and ask the question of your friends and acquaintances, you might experience some difficultly finding someone who could give you, off the cuff, an accurate and adequate definition of honor. Those who do respond will probably offer synonyms, digging into their memories for other words that are seldom used in today's world, like integrity, probity, morality, and self-sufficiency based upon an ethical and moral code. Some might even refine that further to include a conscience, but no one has ever really succeeded in defining honor absolutely, because it is a very personal phenomenon, resonating differently in everyone who is aware of it. We seldom speak of it today, in our post-modern, post-everything society. It is an anachronism, a quaint, mildly amusing concept from a bygone time, and those of us who do speak of it and think of it are regarded benevolently, and condescendingly, as eccentrics. But honor, in every age except, perhaps, our own, has been highly regarded and greatly respected, and it has always been one of those intangible attributes that everyone assumes they possess naturally and in abundance. The standards established for it have always been high, and often artificially so, and throughout history battle standards have been waved as symbols of the honor and prowess of their owners. But for men and women of goodwill, the standard of honor has always been individual, jealously guarded, in ~ Jack Whyte

Behind these practical studies lay powerful, intertwined, and potentially contradictory beliefs: that language provides a key to the rational, scientific understanding of the world and that language is more than human speech, that it claims a divine origin and is the means by which God created the cosmos and Adam named the beasts.

As we will see, both ideas strongly influenced the Inklings, whose leading members wrote many words about the meaning of words. For Owen Barfield, language is the fossil record of the history and evolution of human consciousness; for C. S. Lewis, it is a mundane tool that "exists to communicate whatever it can communicate" but also, as in That Hideous Strength, an essential part of our metaphysical makeup for good or ill; for Charles Williams, language is power, a field of force for the magician, a vehicle of prayer for the believing Christian; for Tolkien, language is a fallen human instrument and a precious divine gift ("O felix peccatum Babel!" he exclaimed in his essay "English and Welsh"), a supreme art, and, as "Word", a name for God. ~ Philip Zaleski

Highly complex numbers like the Comma of Pythagoras, Pi and Phi (sometimes called the Golden Proportion), are known as irrational numbers. They lie deep in the structure of the physical universe, and were seen by the Egyptians as the principles controlling creation, the principles by which matter is precipitated from the cosmic mind.

Today scientists recognize the Comma of Pythagoras, Pi and the Golden Proportion as well as the closely related Fibonacci sequence are universal constants that describe complex patterns in astronomy, music and physics. ...

To the Egyptians these numbers were also the secret harmonies of the cosmos and they incorporated them as rhythms and proportions in the construction of their pyramids and temples. ~ Jonathan Black

History tells creativity is a result of Soul song. ~ Aporva Kala

The fact is that Britain is the most warlike nation on earth. In the history of armed combat, we are the only democracy to have declared war on another democracy - England versus Finland in the second world war, in case you're interested - and we're always at the front of the queue when Johnny Foreigner gets a bit uppity. Who stood up to the Kaiser? Who stood up to Adolf? And let's not forget the Argies. What other country would have sent its fleet halfway round the world and lost 250 men to protect a flock of sheep and some oil that might or might not be there? We're still at it. ~ Jeremy Clarkson

Sitting for a picture is morbid business. A portrait doesn't begin to mean anything until the subject is dead. This is the whole point. We're doing this to create a kind of sentimental past for people in decades to come. It's their past, their history we're inventing here. And it's not how I look now that matters. It's how I'll look in twenty-five years as clothing and faces change, as photographs change. The deeper I pass into death, the more powerful my picture becomes. Isn't this why picture-taking is so ceremonial? It's like a wake. And I'm the actor made up for the laying-out. ~ Don DeLillo

The whole history between Haiti and the Dominican Republic is complicated. We share the island of Hispaniola, and Haiti occupied the Dominican Republic for twenty-two years after 1804 for fear that the French and Spanish would come back and reinstitute slavery. So we have this unique situation of being two independent nations on the same island, but with each community having its own grievance. ~ Edwidge Danticat