Living History Quotes

There exists [a] word in German, Geschichte, which designates not accomplished history, but history in the present, doubtless determined in large part, yet only in part, by the already accomplished past; for a history which is present, which is living, is also open to a future that is uncertain, unforeseeable, not yet accomplished, and therefore aleatory. Living history obeys only a constant (not a law): the constant of class struggle. Marx did not use the term 'constant', which I have taken from Levi-Strauss, but an expression of genius: 'tendential law', capable of inflecting (but not contradicting) the primary tendential law, which means that a tendency does not possess the form or figure of linear law, but that it can bifurcate under the impact of an encounter with another tendency, and so on ad infinitum. At each intersection the tendency can take a path that is unforeseeable because it is aleatory. ~ Louis Althusser

Writers got to pick the endings of their novels, but Beatrice wasn't living a story. She was living history, and history went on forever. ~ Katharine McGee

According to energy medicine, we are all living history books. Our bodies contain our histories- every chapter, line and verse of every event and relationship in our lives. As our lives unfold, our biological health becomes a living, breathing biographical statement that conveys our strengths, weaknesses, hopes and fears. ~ Caroline Myss

I'd been going to study Pre-Flowering History," Tiercel offered.
"Now you're living it," Kave said. ~ Mercedes Lackey

It struck Sophie that Comic-Con was something like a modern-day Brigadoon, a thriving city of a hundred and fifty thousand people that sprang up here in San Diego for less than a week every summer. People flocked to it from across the nation and around the world to populate it for its all-too-short existence, played their chosen roles, then dispersed back to their real homes as soon as the city disappeared. And the next summer, they'd do it all over again, forming a living history of their own in annual installments. ~ Matt Forbeck

All the things that are part of your heritage make you British - that makes this country what it is. It's part of your history. And here, unlike America, it's still living history. ~ Bill Bryson

History teaches us every day; our understanding is the matter! ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

I've spent most of my life perfecting the craft of living history. I have no practice at living in the present. ~ Leila Sales

Rumors become the story du jour. And while our past experiences may have seemed like ancient history to us, every detail of our lives was being sifted and combed as if we were some sort of archaeological dig. ~ Hillary Rodham Clinton

Shiny like new zinc holding up a roof or a fence right beside old zinc, the material itself a living history of when last the politician did the ghetto a favor. ~ Marlon James

The people we find truly anathema are the ones who reduce the past to caricature and distort
it to fit their own bigoted stereotypes. We've gone to events that claimed to be historic fashion
shows but turned out to be gaudy polyester parades with no shadow of reality behind them. As
we heard our ancestors mocked and bigoted stereotypes presented as facts, we felt like we had
gone to an event advertised as an NAACP convention only to discover it was actually a minstrel
show featuring actors in blackface. Some so-called "living history" events really are that bigoted.
When we object to history being degraded this way, the guilty parties shout that they are "just
having fun." What they are really doing is attacking a past that cannot defend itself. Perhaps
they are having fun, but it is the sort of fun a schoolyard brute has at the expense of a child who
goes home bruised and weeping. It's time someone stood up for the past.
I have always hated bullies. The instinct to attack difference can be seen in every social
species, but if humans truly desire to rise above barbarism, then we must cease acting like beasts.
The human race may have been born in mud and ignorance, but we are blessed with minds
sufficiently powerful to shape our behavior. Personal choices form the lives of individuals; the
sum of all interactions determine the nature of societies.
At present, it is politically fashionable in America to ~ Sarah A. Chrisman

History was interesting to the extent that it was catastrophic and, while that might make absorbing viewing, it made horrible living. ~ Isaac Asimov

The Wellbriety path does not compete with A.A. or any other pathway of personal recovery, but instead enriches those pathways by embracing them within the web of Native American tribal histories and cultures. In these pages, you will meet people who have committed themselves to live their lives on the Red Road. Here you will meet Native people whose stories embody the living history of Native American recovery. You will hear the details of their addiction and recovery journeys and feel the life and hope in ~ White Bison

One has to imagine the impact of Paddy on an old count from eastern Europe, barely able to live off his much-diminished lands and keep the roof on a house stocked with paintings and furniture that harked back to better days. His children might take a certain pride in their ancient lineage, but they also made it clear that the world had moved on and they planned to move with it. Then a scruffy young Englishman with a rucksack turns up on the doorstep, recommended by a friend. he is polite, cheerful, and cannot hear enough about the family history. He pores over the books and albums in the library, and asks a thousand questions about the princely rulers, dynastic marriages, wars and revolts and waves of migration that shaped this part of the world. He wants to hear about the family portraits too, and begs the Count to remember the songs the peasants used to sing when he was a child. Instead of feeling like a useless fragment of a broken empire, the Count is transformed. This young Englishman has made him realize that he is part of living history, a link in an unbroken chain going back to Charlemagne and beyond. ~ Artemis Cooper

What I love about the stories of the Great Migration is that this is not ancient history; this is living history. Most people of color can find someone in their own family who had experienced a migration of some kind, knowing the sense of dislocation, longing and fortitude. ~ Isabel Wilkerson

I love art, and I love history, but it is living art and living history that I love. It is in the interest of living art and living history that I oppose so-called restoration. What history can there be in a building bedaubed with ornament, which cannot at the best be anything but a hopeless and lifeless imitation of the hope and vigor of the earlier world? ~ William Morris

I got to have about 15 minutes with Michelle Obama, and that was a big deal because you're like, 'Wow, I'm part of living history.' You know? I definitely think she could take me in an arm wrestling match. ~ Ross Mathews

Saint Bartleby's School for Young Gentlemen
Annual Report
Student: Artemis Fowl II
Year: First
Fees: Paid
Tutor: Dr Po

Language Arts
As far as I can tell, Artemis has made absolutely no progress since the beginning of the year. This is because his abilities are beyond the scope of my experience. He memorizes and understands Shakespeare after a single reading. He finds mistakes in every exercise I administer, and has taken to chuckling gently when I attempt to explain some of the more complex texts. Next year I intend to grant his request and give him a library pass during my class.

Mathematics
Artemis is an infuriating boy. One day he answers all my questions correctly, and the next every answer is wrong. He calls this an example of the chaos theory, and says that he is only trying to prepare me for the real world. He says the notion of infinity is ridiculous. Frankly, I am not trained to deal with a boy like Artemis. Most of my pupils have trouble counting without the aid of their fingers. I am sorry to say, there is nothing I can teach Artemis about mathematics, but someone should teach him some manners.

Social Studies
Artemis distrusts all history texts, because he says history was written by the victors. He prefers living history, where survivors of certain events can actually be interviewed. Obviously this makes studying the Middle Ages somewhat difficult. Artemis has asked for permission to build a ~ Eoin Colfer

We are all living history, and it's hard to say now what will be important in the future. One thing's certain, though: if we throw it away, it's gone. ~ Marilyn Johnson

I love to read history books, which is where I get my ideas. I also read historical romance for pleasure. ~ Virginia Henley

The word 'living' has so many connotations that I'm almost reluctant to try to define it scientifically because it sounds as if I'm then downgrading all the other significances of that word. ~ Francis Collins

We are never old with the strength of the spirit, although the body may fail. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

My fancies are fireflies Specks of living light twinkling in the dark. ~ Rabindranath Tagore

Hating L.A. was in my Northern California DNA. We even had a burl plaque that hung on our living room wall that read, "We Don't Give a Damn How it's Done in L.A. ~ Antonia Crane

Psychology is the science of psychic states both as to content and form, regarded from an objective standpoint, and brought in relation to the living corporeal individual. ~ Boris Sidis

The immigrant artist shares with all other artists the desire to interpret and possibly remake his or her own world. So though we may not be creating as dangerously as our forebears - though we are not risking torture, beatings, execution, though exile does not threaten us into perpetual silence - still, while we are at work bodies are littering the streets somewhere. People are buried under rubble somewhere. Mass graves are being dug somewhere. Survivors are living in makeshift tent cities and refugee camps somewhere, shielding their heads from the rain, closing their eyes, covering their ears, to shut out the sounds of military "aid" helicopters. And still, many are reading, and writing, quietly, quietly. ~ Edwidge Danticat

Great artists, as history reveals, have been harshly persecuted time and again by the frightened and ill-educated, ~ Philip Roth

What's risky is living your life and never trying for anything and never doing something brave and never getting yourself scared. ~ Angelina Jolie

I have come to believe that food is history of the deepest kind. Everything we eat tells a tale of ingenuity and creation, domination and injustice-and does so more vividly than any other artifact, any other medium. ~ Robin Sloan

We grow justly weary of our politics. But we must remember this: Politics - in all its grubby, grasping, corrupt, contemptible manifestations - is sovereign in human affairs. Everything ultimately rests upon it. Fairly or not, politics is the driver of history. ~ Charles Krauthammer

Sow the living part of yourselves in the furrow of life. ~ Miguel De Unamuno

Something in my gut twisted so hard that it felt like I was being tickled by an invisible hand, and it took me a moment to realize what it was. Hope. It had been so long since I'd felt it that the sensation was like something living inside me, something wonderful waiting to break free, just like I was. ~ Alexander Gordon Smith

It was on the day, or rather the night, of 27 June 1787, between the hours of eleven and twelve, that I wrote the last lines of the last page in a summer-house in my garden ... I will not dissemble the first emotions of joy on the recovery of my freedom, and perhaps the establishment of my fame. But my pride was soon humbled, and a sober melancholy was spread over my mind by the idea that I had taken my everlasting leave of an old and agreeable companion, and that, whatsoever might be the future date of my history, the life of the historian must be short and precarious. ~ Edward Gibbon

The comfortable thing about the study of history is that it inclines us to think hopefully of our own times. ~ Agnes Repplier

The things you're passionate about and interested in, get experience with them by going deep on projects. I would encourage science projects, plays. Pursue science, math, writing, history - the 21st century demands a lot of cross-disciplinary thinking. ~ Megan Smith

Should they inquire of the Dead on account of the Living? ~ Anonymous

Jostling in the saddle against an iron shirt of mail wasn't half as romantic as the books made it out to be. ~ Amy Jarecki

And thus goes segregation which is the most far-reaching development in the history of the Negro since the enslavement of the race. ~ Carter G. Woodson

I predict we will abolish suffering throughout the living world. Our descendants will be animated by gradients of genetically pre-programmed well-being that are orders of magnitude richer than today's peak experiences. ~ David Pearce

I'd like a drink. I desire to forget life. Life is a hideous invention by somebody I don't know. It doesn't last, and it's good for nothing. You break your neck simply living. ~ Victor Hugo

I've always been interested in Vietnam, feel it's a seminal event in our nation's history, and have explored it over the years - but I hadn't been interested in doing a documentary about it. I felt there had been a lot done about Vietnam, and didn't know if I could add anything new to the discussion. ~ Rory Kennedy

Never thought acting was something you could make a living at. It wasn't until I was in college, and got a lead in a play, that I began to realize I might just be able to blunder into this profession. ~ Ed Asner

He living too far in the past. ~ August Wilson

See, everything that ever could possibly have happened, in the entire history of the universe right from the Big Bang up until now, _did_ happen -- somewhere. And _every_ possible difference means a different universe. Not just if Napoleon lost at Waterloo, or won, or whatever he didn't do here; what does Napoleon matter to the _universe_, anyway? Betelgeuse doesn't give a flying damn for all of Europe, past, present, or future. But every single atom or particle or whatever, whenever it had a chance to do something -- break up or stay together, or move one direction instead of another, whatever -- it did _all_ of them, but all in different universes. They didn't branch off, either -- all the universes were always there, there just wasn't any difference between them until this particular event came along. And that means that there are millions and millions of identical universes, too, where the differences haven't happened yet. There's an infinite number of universes, more than that an infinity of infinities, I mean you can't really comprehend it. If you think you're close then multiply that a few zillion times -- everything is out there. ~ Lawrence Watt-Evans

Before I moved to Brooklyn to pursue music, I was a high school dropout and speed freak who'd been living with her dealer boyfriend in Bucks County, Pennsylvania at 16. ~ Britta Phillips

Theories about world literature, of which fairy tale is a fundamental part, emphasize the porousness of borders, geographical and inguistic: no frontiercan keep a good story from roaming. It will travel, and travel far, and travel back again in a different guise, a changed mood, and, above all, a new meaning. ~ Marina Warner

He'd been so convinced that Lucetta was a victim in the play called Life that he'd completely neglected to take the time to see past his misconceptions. She was not searching for a knight in shining armor, she was searching for a partner, someone she could share her experiences with - not someone who'd want to take over her life and make everything easy for her. Miss Lucetta Plum was certainly not a lady who would enjoy easy, at least not all of the time. She was too complicated, too accomplished, and too intelligent to live a life of mundane pleasantness. She was also a lady who deserved an equal partner, not a gentleman who wanted to set her up on a shelf, away from the messiness of living, something he'd been determined to do. "That's ~ Jen Turano

With every new day come the Lord's great love, grace and mercies. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

I do not believe you can have infinite population or economic growth in a finite world. We are living on the shoulders of some awesome geometric curves. ~ Richard Lamm

The popular mocking of reparations as a harebrained scheme authored by wild-eyed lefties and intellectually unserious black nationalists is fear masquerading as laughter. ~ Ta-Nehisi Coates

Houses had the meanest set of white people in them. Pretty in their living but nasty in their ways. ~ Sarah E. Wright

A critic looking at these tightly focused, targeted interventions might dismiss them as Band-Aid solutions. But that phrase should not be considered a term of disparagement. The Band-Aid is an inexpensive, convenient, and remarkably versatile solution to an astonishing array of problems. In their history, Band-Aids have probably allowed millions of people to keep working or playing tennis or cooking or walking when they would otherwise have had to stop. The Band-Aid solution is actually the best kind of solution because it involves solving a problem with the minimum amount of effort and time and cost. ~ Malcolm Gladwell

One human can change the course of human history - all it takes is the right idea, at the right time, in the right place. And the right place is where you stand at present, the right time is right this very moment and the right idea is the one that defines your existence the best. ~ Abhijit Naskar