This Is History Quotes

Presidents have a right to certain prerogatives, including the expectation of a certain deference. He's the president; this is history. But we seem to have come a long way since Ronald Reagan was regularly barked at by Sam Donaldson, almost literally, and the president shrugged it off. ~ Peggy Noonan

The story is that while a child named Servius Tullius lay sleeping, his head burst into flames in the sight of many. The general outcry which so great a miracle called forth brought the king and queen to the place. One of the servants fetched water to quench the fire, but was checked by the queen, who stilled the uproar and commanded that the boy should not be disturbed until he awoke of himself. Soon afterwards sleep left him, and with it disappeared the flames. Then, talking her husband aside, Tanaquil Said: 'Do you see this child whom we are bringing up in so humble a fashion? Be assured he will one day be a lamp to our dubious fortunes, and a protector to the royal house in the day of its distress. Let us therefore rear with all solicitude one who will lend high renowen to the state and to our family.' It is said that from that moment the boy began to be looked upon as a son, and to be trained in the studies by which men are inspired to bear themselves greatly. ~ Livy

To a very great extent human history has been the story of the unequal accumulation of harvested wealth, shifting from one centre of power to another, while always expanding the four great inequalities. This is history. Nowhere, as far as I know, has there ever been a civilization or moment when the wealth of the harvests, created by all, has been equitably distributed. Power has been exerted wherever it can be, and each successful coercion has done its part to add to the general inequality, which has risen in direct proportion to the wealth gathered; for wealth and power are much the same. The possessors of the wealth in effect buy the armed power they need to enforce the growing inequality. And so the cycle continues. ~ Kim Stanley Robinson

I sort of missed one big thing, to touch first base. I hope I didn't act foolish, but this is history. ~ Mark McGwire

This is history written in lightning. ~ Woodrow Wilson

[talking about the Holocaust]
'But to put something in context is a step towards saying it can be understood and that it can be explained. And if it can be explained that it can be explained away.'
'But this is History. Distance yourselves. Our perspective on the past alters. Looking back, immediately in front of us is dead ground. We don't see it, and because we don't see it this means that there is no period so remote as the recent past. And one of the historian's jobs is to anticipate what our perspective of that period will be ... even on the Holocaust. ~ Alan Bennett

George, this is history," Lacon protested weakly. "This is not today. ~ John Le Carre

So much history, if you or I were to write it, could seem a fiction. These separations, these lines that tell us this is fiction or non-fiction, that this is history or this is a novel, are often useless. ~ Jamaica Kincaid

People always want to be on the right side of history; it is a lot easier to say, 'What an atrocity that was' then it is to say, 'What an atrocity this is.' ~ Natasha Trethewey

This is a time when it is frightening to be alive, when it is hard to think of human beings as rational creatures. Everywhere we look we see brutality, stupidity, until it seems that there is nothing else to be seen but that
a descent into barbarism, everywhere, which we are unable to check. But I think that while it is true there is a general worsening, it is precisely because things are so frightening we become hypnotized, and do not notice
or if we notice, belittle
equally strong forces on the other side, the forces, in short, of reason, sanity and civilization. ~ Doris Lessing

Unraveling the euro is a terrible thing. This is a 50-year endeavor to get this continent together and that's a wonderful endeavor. ~ Jamie Dimon

History is written by the victors
and when there is no victors, it all winds up in the corporate shredders. ~ Neal Shusterman

I have a great plain blue shirt from APC, and a denim one from Dolce that I wear constantly. It's hard to find the perfect denim shirt, but this is it. ~ Felicity Jones

This is what happens when you don't let gays marry; they start designing clothes out of spite. ~ Jon Stewart

This is a free country, and nobody should be criticized for their political beliefs. We're all allowed to have our opinions. ~ Shannen Doherty

As artists, we distort the truth and create the most amazing theories; we create entire philosophies and the most amazing religions; we create stories and superstitions about everything, including ourselves. And this is exactly the main point: We create them. ~ Miguel Ruiz

This is your time to shine and this is all you have to bring? This is your voice? You speak and hate is all you have to share? ~ Anastasia

The most direct path to achievement whether you're an entrepreneur, a company executive, or a pro soccer player is to be a great performer and a great team member. This is also the secret to a meaningful career and self-fulfillment. ~ Maynard Webb

The triumph of the Confederacy ... would be a victory for the powers of evil which would give courage to the enemies of progress and damp the sprits of its friends all over the civilized world ... [The American Civil War] is destined to be a turning point, for good or evil, of the course of human affairs. ~ John Stuart Mill

This is definitely it," he says. "The attack simulation serum, I mean. No question."
"It's always good to have another person verify," Matthew says.
I am standing with my brother in the hours before he dies. And he is analyzing serums. It's so stupid. ~ Veronica Roth

I think in terms of the themes that I have worked on most is establishing questions of race in the context of Latin America. This is a theme that makes uncomfortable a lot of people, and it obviously makes the Latin American Left uncomfortable. ~ Bocafloja

What is needed is history, genuine history, multi-faceted history, 'thick description' history that takes seriously the full range of human life and culture. ~ N. T. Wright

I believe that history is capable of anything. There exists no folly that men have not tried out. ~ Carl Jung

If you don't know history, then you don't know anything. You are a leaf that doesn't know it is part of a tree. ~ Michael Crichton

This is for writers yet to be published who think the uphill climb will never end. Keep believing. This is also for published writers grown jaded by the process. Remember how lucky you are. ~ Terry Brooks

Capitalism is chronically unstable.Boom and bust has always marked capitalism in the United States. There were panics in 1785, 1791, 1819, 1857, 1869, 1873, 1907, 1929 and 1987.In economies and politics, as in war, an astonishing number of people die, like the man on the railway crossing, defending their right of way. This is a poorly developed instinct in Switzerland. No country so firmly avows the principles of private enterprise but in few have the practical concessions to socialism been more numerous and varied. ~ John Kenneth Galbraith

What with our hooks, snares, nets, and dogs, we are at war with all living creatures, and nothing comes amiss but that which is either too cheap or too common; and all this is to gratify a fantastical palate. ~ Seneca The Younger

When you stand in the present, you become thoughtlessly aware. And this state is the first state you achieve, and this is the state where you become absolutely peaceful within yourself. The peace is so great that you enjoy your peaceful existence. Not only that, but you become the source of peace. Wherever you go, you emit peace. ~ Nirmala Srivastava

This is my story now. ~ Reki Kawahara

One critic in the L.A. Times said John Kerry looks like he is thinking too much. Well this is one place President Bush has him beat. ~ Jay Leno

There were a few things that went into it. When you're doing something you're trying to be your audience at the same time, so if somebody tells me that this is a movie about retired opera singers, you think 'maybe I'll wait for it to come to DVD'. You're not rushing off to see it. ~ Dustin Hoffman

This is fan fiction, but it's the fan fiction of a classical scholar who knows his stuff, even if he is a touch irreverent and unorthodox. ~ Sarah Warning Potentially Off-Topic

I don't know," I shrugged. "I'm afraid that it's not enough. That what I've said and what I've done, and what I'm doing right now isn't enough. That you won't forgive me and you won't want to be with me. And you do this thing - where you shut yourself off and you don't talk to me - or anyone - for hours, or days, and I have no idea how you're feeling or what you're thinking. So yeah - I'm nervous as all hell that this is the last time I'll get to hold you. I'm afraid that we'll never be as close as we were. I'm scared that you'll want nothing at all to do with me. ~ Jay McLean

I love it now that a large minority of people who are handicapped prefer to call themselves crippled. This is all part of the game, like queer theory. ~ Leslie Fiedler

The bizarre but all too common transformation of the woman artist from a producer in her own right into a subject for representation forms a leitmotif in the history of art. Confounding subject and object, it undermines the speaking position of the individual woman artist by generalizing her. Denied her individuality, she is displaced from being a producer and becomes instead a sign for male creativity. ~ Whitney Chadwick

It is the idea of 'People' to treat its material as if it were history and, what is more, as if it were the history of a happy period. ~ George W. S. Trow

Incase the title was misleading, this is the story of Qorth. He was an alien, but he was more normal, more boring, more goofy, and more ho-hum than any human I'd ever known . . . to the point that I sometimes wonder if he was really even an alien. To be fair, he did have "magical" otherworldly powers and some weird traits, like pointed ears. It rained when he was sad. His eyes were solid black, which really creeped me out in the beginning but, eh, I got used to it. He had weird tastes in food, like he would put ketchup on pancakes, and animals were sock puppets to him. The night I found him, it was the animals who led me to him. ~ Ash Gray

Jesus told you all that I hid the spiritual wisdom from the mind and thus it could only be accessed from the heart. And yet men become "learned" in the Bible and study and pull it apart and attempt to put it back together again. Just like the old nursery rhyme of Humpty Dumpty, "All the King's horses and all the King's men could not put Humpty Dumpty back together again." My words cannot be put together again. My word cannot be "put together" by the mind of any man.
This is why I gave the New Covenant. It was and is My promise to guide those who wander, home again unto My heart. ~ Debra Clemente

But this is my greatest need and yours: to know God, love God, delight in God, and make much of God. ~ Kevin DeYoung

Overcoming the need to create outsiders is our greatest challenge as human beings... This is why there are so many old and weak and sick and poor people on the margins of society. We tend to push out the people who have qualities we're most afraid we will find in ourselves ~ Melinda Gates

This is the greatest mystery of the human mind
the inductive leap. Everything falls into place, irrelevancies relate, dissonance becomes harmony, and nonsense wears a crown of meaning. But the clarifying leap springs from the rich soil of confusion, and the leaper is not unfamiliar with pain. ~ John Steinbeck

HARRY, THIS IS NO TIME TO BE A GENTLEMAN!" Wood roared as Harry swerved to avoid collision. "KNOCK HER OFF HER BROOM IF YOU HAVE TO! ~ J.K. Rowling

At first, I was shocked that Diane could even suggest this family reunion [on television], and then I realized this is just the way of the world, or at least the way of fin de siecle America. Not only would the next revolution be televised, but so would every other little stupid thing. It was already happening: Television reunions between adopted children and their birth parents ... ~ Elizabeth Wurtzel

This is the great lesson the depressive learns: Nothing in the world is inherently compelling. Whatever may be really "out there" cannot project itself as an affective experience. It is all a vacuous affair with only a chemical prestige. Nothing is either good or bad, desirable or undesirable, or anything else except that it is made so by laboratories inside us producing the emotions on which we live. And to live on our emotions is to live arbitrarily, inaccurately - imparting meaning to what has none of its own. Yet what other way is there to live? Without the ever-clanking machinery of emotion, everything would come to a standstill. There would be nothing to do, nowhere to go, nothing to be, and no one to know. The alternatives are clear: to live falsely as pawns of affect, or to live factually as depressives, or as individuals who know what is known to the depressive. How advantageous that we are not coerced into choosing one or the other, neither choice being excellent. One look at human existence is proof enough that our species will not be released from the stranglehold of emotionalism that anchors it to hallucinations. That may be no way to live, but to opt for depression would be to opt out of existence as we consciously know it. ~ Thomas Ligotti

But I've pushed my limit and here's the truth: this is the most painfully confusing time in my life and he's the first person who said all the right words to me and reminds me of the first days of summer where you leave home without [your] jacket, and my favorite songs playing over and over. ~ Adam Silvera

I bare my soul and you are suspicious! No, Scarlett, this is a bona fide honorable declaration. I admit that it's not in the best of taste, coming at this time, but I have a very good excuse for my lack of breeding. I'm going away tomorrow for a long time and I fear that if I wait till I return you'll have married some one else with a little money. So I thought, why not me and my money? Really, Scarlett, I can't go all my life waiting to catch you between husbands. ~ Margaret Mitchell

What are the qualities of human greatness that create history? Every time, if we think far enough, it is an ability to look through the confusion of the moment and see the moral issue involved; it is a refusal to allow a fundamental sense of justice to be distorted; it is the ability to listen to the voice of conscience until conscience becomes a trumpet call to like-minded people, so that they gather together around each other, with mutual purpose and mutual aid, and make a new period in history. ~ Jane A. Adams

Apparently, the prerequisite to being a gay public figure is to appear on the cover of a magazine with the caption 'I am gay'. I apologize for not doing so if this is what was expected! ~ Jonathan Knight

Organizations exist to make people's strengths effective and their weaknesses irrelevant. And this is the work of effective leaders. ~ Frances Hesselbein

Because I'm an art historian, I have some experience of writing that comes out of close attention. That's what really art history is. You're looking at something very closely, and you try to write in a meticulous way about it. ~ Teju Cole

I didn't think it sounded so much different than anyone else's voice until I got to the broadcasting school, and I raised my hand to ask a question of the school president, and he said, 'See me after class.' And the rest is history. ~ Robin Quivers

There can be no living together without understanding, and understanding means compromise. Compromise is not a dirty word, it is the cornerstone of civilization, just as politics is the art of making civilization work. Men do not and cannot and hopefully will never think alike, hence each must yield a little in order to avoid war, to avoid bickering. Men and women meet together and adjust their differences, this is compromise. He who stands unyielding and immovable upon a principle is often a fool, and often bigoted, and usually left standing alone with his principle while other men adjust their differences and go on. ~ Louis L'Amour