Non Historical Story Quotes

Although we cannot attain Jesus in his fullness unless at the same time we also take into account his unique relationship with God which has a special nature of its own, this does not of itself mean that Jesus' unique way of life is the only way to God. For even Jesus not only reveals God but also conceals him, since he appeared among us in non-godlike, creaturely humanity. As man he is a historical, contingent being who in no way can represent the full riches of God... unless one denies the reality of his real humanity (and that runs counter to the consensus of the church). So the gospel itself forbids us to speak of a Christian religious imperialism and exclusivism. ~ Edward Schillebeeckx

My reluctance to enter any relationship with men has been affected by the fact that many Aboriginal men are very wounded and are not able to be in a healthy relationship due to historical damage and with non-Native men because I no longer want to educate them about Indigenous Issues. I'm tired of being the educator or nurse. ~ Marilyn Dumont

So what's the point of longing for a new, monumental category hidden somewhere in the non-Western discourse? On the contrary, shouldn't we emphasize that Western art historical thinking has not necessarily to be regarded as monumental? This would be a good condition for dialogue with scholars who are not (or do not want to be) affiliated with "our" tradition. ~ Ralph Ubl

In place of the old beliefs of a civilization based on godliness, judgment and historical loyalty, young people are given the new beliefs of a society based on equality and inclusion, and are told that the judgment of other lifestyles is a crime ... The "non-judgmental" attitude towards other cultures goes hand-in-hand with a fierce denunciation of the culture that might have been one's own ~ Roger Scruton

For some reason, notwithstanding the alienation and utter rejection, I consider myself a global citizen. They say misery calls for company and I've always been a man of funerals. The companion of the misfortunate, until they are not! ~ Asaad Almohammad

Until recently, attempts to resolve the contradictions created by urbanization, centralization, bureaucratic growth and statification were viewed as a vain counterdrift to "progress" - a counterdrift that could be dismissed as chimerical and reactionary. The anarchist was regarded as a forlorn visionary, a social outcast, filled with nostalgia for the peasant village or the medieval commune. His yearnings for a decentralized society and for a humanistic community at one with nature and the needs of the individual - the spontaneous individual, unfettered by authority - were viewed as the reactions of a romantic, of a declassed craftsman or an intellectual "misfit." His protest against centralization and statification seemed all the less persuasive because it was supported primarily by ethical considerations - by Utopian, ostensibly "unrealistic," notions of what man could be, not by what he was. In response to this protest, opponents of anarchist thought - liberals, rightists and authoritarian "leftists" - argued that they were the voices of historic reality, that their statist and centralist notions were rooted in the objective, practical world.
Time is not very kind to the conflict of ideas. Whatever may have been the validity of libertarian and non-libertarian views a few years ago, historical development has rendered virtually all objections to anarchist thought meaningless today. The modern city and state, the massive coal-steel technology of the Industrial Revoluti ~ Murray Bookchin

The novel had reached its apogee with the marriage plot and had never recovered from its disappearance. In the days when success in life had depended on marriage, and marriage had depended on money, novelists had had a subject to write about. The great epics sang of war, the novel of marriage. Sexual equality, good for women, had been bad for the novel. And divorce had undone it completely. What would it matter whom Emma married if she could file for separation later? How would Isabel Archer's marriage to Gilbert Osmond have been affected by the existence of a prenup? As far as Saunders was concerned, marriage didn't mean much anymore, and neither did the novel. Where could you find the marriage plot nowadays? You couldn't. You had to read historical fiction. You had to read non-Western novels involving traditional societies. Afghani novels, Indian novels. You had to go, literarily speaking, back in time. ~ Jeffrey Eugenides

The movement of nonviolent non-co-operation has nothing in common with the historical struggles for freedom in the West. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Taboos, magic, superstition, personified abstraction, myths, gods, empty verbalisms, in every culture and at every period of history express man's persisting non-logical impulses. Gods and goddesses like Athena or Janus or Ammon are replaced by new divinities such as Progress and Humanity and even Science; hymns to Jupiter give way to invocations to the People; the magic of the votes and electoral manipulations supersedes the magic of dolls and wands; faith in the Historical Process does duty for faith in the God of our Fathers. ~ James Burnham

The enemy is typically depicted as a dangerous octopus, a vicious dragon, a multiheaded hydra, a giant venomous tarantula, or an engulfing Leviathan. Other frequently used symbols include vicious predatory felines or birds, monstrous sharks, and ominous snakes, particularly vipers and boa constrictors. Scenes depicting strangulation or crushing, ominous whirlpools, and treacherous quicksands also abound in pictures from the time of wars, revolutions, and political crises. The juxtaposition of paintings from non-ordinary states of consciousness that depict perinatal experiences with the historical pictorial documentation collected by Lloyd de Mause and Sam Keen offer strong evidence for the perinatal roots of human violence. ~ Stanislav Grof

He guessed the NKVD didn't even know that Waffen-SS men could be identified by the blood-group tattoos on the underside of their left arms, usually near the armpit. Richter didn't have one. He'd been classed as a non-combatant, as he'd said, at least for a portion of the war. He decided it could be weeks before they found out who he was.
But Volsky's confidence appeared to have been restored too, now. He said, 'And the vat of incense?'
'I had the incense brought from the remnants of a Christmas smoker factory. Silly little hollow figurines invented by toymakers in the Ore Mountains. Cone incense burns down inside the figurines and the smoke emerges from the open mouths. There was a glut of them,' Richter said, truthfully. 'Berliners were shocked and saddened after Stalingrad. But they lost the will to celebrate after the Battle of Kursk. They knew the Red Army was coming. The puerile little incense smokers were redundant, together with the incense they were to hold. Except it didn't go to waste. The vat was taken from a merchant's house. It's from Hong Kong, I think.'
Volsky leaned back in his chair. He said, 'Why go to all the trouble?'
That's a good question, Richter thought.
He stifled a smile. 'To mask the smell. ~ Gary Haynes

In fact, this figure [five million "murdered" Gentiles] is too high if one is counting victims who were targeted exclusively for racial reasons, but too low if one counts the total number of victims the Nazi regime killed outside military operations.
(...)
Wiesenthal's aggrandizement of his role in the Eichmann capture is far less disturbing and historiographically significant than another of his inventions. In an attempt to elicit non-Jewish interest in the Holocaust, Wiesenthal decided to broaden the population of victims - even though it meant falsifying history. He began to speak of eleven million victims: six million Jews and five million non-Jews. Holocaust historian Yehuda Bauer immediately recognized that this number made no historical sense. Who, Bauer wondered, constituted Wiesenthal's five million.

--The Eichmann Trial, page 8 ~ Deborah E. Lipstadt

When you want something, all the Universe conspires to helping you achieve it.
The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
Just ask.. ~ Victoria Aldridge Washuk

…I relied on an unpublished report by Jose Fernandez-Partagas, a late-twentieth-century meteorologist who recreated for the National Hurricane Center the tracks of many historical hurricanes, among them the Galveston Hurricane. He was a meticulous researcher given to long hours in the library of the University of Miami, where he died on August 25, 1997, in his favorite couch. He had no money, no family, no friends--only hurricanes. The hurricane center claimed his body, had him cremated, and on August 31, 1998, launched his ashes through the drop-port of a P-3 Orion hurricane hunter into the heart of Hurricane Danielle. His remains entered the atmosphere at 28 N., 74.2 W., about three hundred miles due east of Daytona Beach. ~ Erik Larson

I have a lot of blurring between fiction and non-fiction in so many of my works. For example, my first novel, 'When Nietzsche Wept,' has a great deal of non-fiction in it. I didn't create many characters at all. Almost all of them are historical characters that actually existed. ~ Irvin D. Yalom

Simply put: Thanksgiving is the day when the dominant white culture (and, sadly, most of the rest of the non-white but non-indigenous population) celebrates the beginning of a genocide that was, in fact, blessed by the men we hold up as our heroic founding fathers ... How does a country deal with the fact that some of its most revered historical figures had certain moral values and political views virtually identical to Nazis? ~ Robert Jensen

Everything changes except human behavior and its consequences. ~ Stephanie M. Sellers

If the Christian church is to move responsibly towards the future, it must restore or renew its ties with its past. Contemporary Catholic and Protestant radicals want to claim that Christianity means whatever "Christian" today happen to believe and practice, be it pantheism, unitarianism, or sodomy. The Christian faith has suffered immeasurable harm because of the tendency of people to use the word "Christian" in a careless and non-historical way. Nothing in this argument would preclude liberal Protestants and Catholics from developing and practicing any religion they like. ~ Ronald H. Nash

But human beings are not machines, and however powerful the pressure to conform, they sometimes are so moved by what they see as injustice that they dare to declare their independence. In that historical possibility lies hope. ~ Howard Zinn

And yet, as you all know, joining humanity is never a simple matter. By beginning to live the same temporality as Westerners, the Japanese now had to live two temporalities simultaneously. On the one hand, there was Time with a capital "T," which flows in the West. On the other hand, there was time with a small "t," which flows in Japan. Moreover, from that point on, the latter could exist only in relation to the former. It could no longer exist independently, yet it could not be the same as the other, either. If I, as a Japanese, find this new historical situation a bit tragic, it's not because Japanese people now had a live in two temporalities. It's rather because as a result of having to do so, they had no choice but to enter the asymmetrical relationship that had marked and continues to mark the modern world - the asymmetrical relationship between the West and the non-West, which is tantamount, however abstractly, to the asymmetrical relationship between what is universal and all the rest that is merely particular. ~ Minae Mizumura

For a while I hoped that Buddhism Without Beliefs might stimulate more public debate and inquiry among Buddhists about these issues, but this did not happen. Instead, it revealed a fault line in the nascent Western Buddhist community between traditionalists, for whom such doctrines are non-negotiable truths, and liberals, like myself, who tend to see them more as contingent products of historical circumstance. ~ Stephen Batchelor

It's funny because when I was growing up, I was really into science fiction and fantasy as a kid. And, when I first became a screenwriter, I ended up really just doing historical drama and non-fiction based stuff, like Band of Brothers and stuff that didn't get made, but was also non-fiction. ~ John Orloff

Historical facts are the vital framework around which non-fiction writers construct their narratives; they are, quite simply, indispensable. ~ Saul David

Yes, and you did it spectacularly. They were the best non words ever not spoken. ~ Robert Thier

To deny the reported six million (approximately) Jews who died, or the 11 million people in total, is to ignore all the eyewitness accounts from Holocaust survivors, the non-Jewish witnesses of the millions who died the open-air massacres around Europe, the concentration camp guards, Nazi officers who admitted to gassings and other related crimes immediately after WW2, and the universal agreement of all mainstream historians who have studied this historical event inside out – not to mention every single scientist who has ever analyzed forensic evidence retrieved from the Nazi genocide. Not even the most corrupt courtroom on Earth could ignore this much evidence – for collectively these confirmations of the Holocaust equate to irrefutable proof that the reported death toll is indeed correct. It is possibly the most well-documented crime of the 20th Century, but remember for religious extremists, Nazi apologists or other anti-Semites it would never matter how much evidence you put in front of them. They would always deny the Holocaust because to admit the event occurred would be to stop believing the Jews are inferior to them. It would also require such bigots to admit the very uncomfortable truth to themselves: that their 'own kind' did these despicable things to the Jewish people. ~ James Morcan

The construction of civilizational difference is not exclusive in any simple sense. The de-essentialization of Islam is paradigmatic for all thinking about the assimilation of non-European peoples to European civilization. The idea that people's historical experience is inessential to them, that it can be shed at will, makes it possible to argue more strongly for the Enlightenment's claim to universality: Muslims, as members of the abstract category "humans," can be assimilated or (as some recent theorist have put it) "translated" into a global ("European") civilization once they have divested themselves of what many of them regard (mistakenly) as essential to themselves. The belief that human beings can be separated from their histories and traditions makes it possible to urge a Europeanization of the Islamic world. And by the same logic, it underlies the belief that the assimilation to Europe's civilization of Muslim immigrants who are--for good or for ill--already in European states is necessary and desirable.
~ Talal Asad

I was trained as a philosopher never to put philosophers and their ideas into historical contexts, since historical context has nothing to do with the validity of the philosopher's positions. I agree that assessing validity and contextualizing historically are two entirely distinct matters and not to be confused with one another. And yet that firm distinction doesn't lead me to endorse the usual way in which history of philosophy is presented. ... The philosophers talk across the centuries exclusively to one another, hermetically sealed from any influences derived from non-philosophical discourse. The subject is far more interesting than that.

... When you ask why did some particular question occur to a scientist or philosopher for the first time, or why did this particular approach seem natural, then your questions concern the context of discovery. When you ask whether the argument the philosopher puts forth to answer that question is sound, or whether the evidence justifies the scientific theory proposed, then you've entered the context of justification. Considerations of history, sociology, anthropology, and psychology are relevant to the context of discovery, but not to justification. You have to keep them straight.... ...(T)he assessment of those intuitions in terms of the argument's soundness isn't accomplished by work done in the context of discovery. And conversely, one doesn't diminish a philosopher's achievement, and doesn't undermine its soundness, by s ~ Rebecca Goldstein

I've been told that I cannot change shit, so I might as well stop torturing myself. My emotions are ridiculed and branded as childish. I have been told that the world has given up on my people. I have been told, and realise that on many occasions, I myself am viewed as an outcast by some of those suffering. I've been confronted and my answer is always the same: I care even in my most fucked-up moments. I care even when gates of shit pour open to drown me; I care because I am a citizen of the world. ~ Asaad Almohammad

As a citizen of the world, it's my instinct to keep the fallen and the suffering in my thoughts. The human brain fascinates me; its limitless bounds of empathy. You see, in my mind there is logic to it: do no harm, prevent harm, help, support, care for the harmed, face the harmer. My stupid idealist conscience considers sympathy, not pity, at its worst, the most basic and the least negotiable civil duty. Of course as a citizen of the world, I should strive to do more. That said, I am only a man and so I often do the least. ~ Asaad Almohammad

Genres are what holds each story together and help it along, but in no way should it ever be treated as a boundary, especially for a reader. If I've only read science fiction books, I would probably consider myself mad. ~ Lauren Lola

The first 'Monsters, Inc.' represents starting at Pixar for me, I have a special place in my heart for it. So to be able to tell a story with those ideas is an honor. ~ Dan Scanlon

McReynolds emphatically shook his head. "No way. Legal's all over that deal. It's squeaky clean. Even the woman signed off. Trammel. I could make her a three-hundred-pound whore who likes black dick in the movie and she couldn't do a thing about it. That deal is perfect." "Yeah, well, what Legal's missed is the part about neither one of them having the rights to the story to sell you in the first place. Those rights happen to reside here with me. Trammel signed them over to me before Dahl came along and took second position. He thought he could move up one by stealing the original contracts out of my files. Only that's not going to work. I've got a witness to the theft and Dahl's fingerprints. He's going to go down on fraud and theft charges and your choice here is to decide whether you want to go down ~ Michael Connelly

Nights without work I spent with whisky and books. ~ Haruki Murakami

Modernist manuals of writing often conflate story with conflict. This reductionism reflects a culture that inflates aggression and competition while cultivating ignorance of other behavioral options. No narrative of any complexity can be built on or reduced to a single element. Conflict is one kind of behavior. There are others, equally important in any human life, such as relating, finding, losing, bearing, discovering, parting, changing. Change is the universal aspect of all these sources of story. Story is something moving, something happening, something or somebody changing. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin