Urban History Quotes

Since its founding, Detroit has been a place of perpetual flames. Three times the city has suffered race riots and three times the city has burned to the ground. The city's flag acknowledges as much. Speramus Meliora; Resurget Cineribus: We hope for better things; it shall rise from the ashes. ~ Charlie LeDuff

I am a curious creature and put my finger in as many cakes as I can: history, film, technology, etc. I'm also a freak for urban history, particularly Barcelona, Paris and New York. I know more weird stuff about 19th-century Manhattan than is probably healthy. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zafon

In his study of Atlanta over the last 60 years, Kevin Kruse convincingly describes the critical connections between race, Sun Belt suburbanization, the rise of the new Republican majority. White Flight is a powerful and compelling book that should be read by anyone interested in modern American politics and post-World War II urban history. ~ Dan Carter

Toward the end of the Second World War, a
new consciousness arose amongst the public
and policy makers of the Western World. After
ten years of crippling economic depression
and another five at war, the public demanded
something new from their disintegrating
urban environments. ~ Lucas Mascotto-Carbone

But history is neither watchmaking nor cabinet construction. It is an endeavor toward better understanding. ~ Marc Bloch

Motherhood goes back in history to a time when a father had no way of knowing his children. Fatherhood only became known when class patriarchal society had established itself and imposed monogamous marriage on women. Motherhood is like sun and rain and plants, a quality and product of nature which does not require laws or systems in order to exist. ~ Nawal El Saadawi

In other words, that works of history are mere collections of facts. It is fiction alone that can show us the true nature of human beings ~ Daisaku Ikeda

A mechanical toothbrush is the greatest oral device in the history of the sex toy industry. ~ Jarod Kintz

Half-way through the labour of an index to this book I recalled the practice of my ten years' study of history; and realized that I had never used the index of a book fit to read. ~ T.E. Lawrence

There are plenty of violent people, but for any randomly selected person today the chances of meeting a violent death at the hands of his or her fellow humans is lower now than it has ever been in human history. ~ Peter Singer

I don't have deal breakers," Alan said. "I look on tempests, and am never shaken. ~ Sarah Rees Brennan

I enjoy doing different kinds of things. I just enjoy being not tied too much. I feel that I'm tied to myself as a kind of traditional musician and a singer, and the history that I have ties me down. ~ Mick Jagger

Education is something which should be apart from the necessities of earning a living, not a tool therefor. It needs contemplation, fallow periods, the measured and guided study of the history of man's reiteration of the most agonizing question of all: Why? ~ John D. MacDonald

There is much to learn about what could happen in the gardens of the future, should designers wish to learn about the past. ~ Tom Turner

DeFrantz's study ... is not the first book about the protean Ailey, who was born in hardscrabble Texas in 1931 and died in 1989 after creating close to 80 works. But it is perhaps the most comprehensive, combining biography, criticism, the analysis of dance criticism, and a sort of corporate history, siting the now firmly established Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in the international cultural landscape. ~ Alvin Ailey

What's the best home-based business opportunity in the world today? Without a doubt, it's network marketing. Like it or hate it, network marketing has created more millionaires than any other industry in history. There's just one problem - it can be hard if you're not used to it! ~ Kevin J. Donaldson

History, by apprising [the people] of the past, will enable them to judge of the future. ~ Thomas Jefferson

I have been enormously impressed by the role that pure chance plays in determining our life history. I was reminded of some famous lines of Robert Frost:
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
I took the one less travled by,
And that has made all the difference.
As I recalled my own experience and development, I was impressed by the series of lucky accidents that determined the road I traveled.
> From "Lives of the Laureates" pg.67 ~ Milton Friedman

Don't make a fuss about a world war. At most, people die ... Half the population wiped out - this happened quite a few times in Chinese history ... It's best if half the population is left, next best one-third ... ~ Mao Zedong

The epitome of white privilege is the luxury of believing that "real communism has never been tried. ~ A.E. Samaan

I like reading about the past. I'm definitely not a history buff, but I do read a bit of history now and again, and to do that for work is really exciting. ~ James McAvoy

The language history of the world shows more of the true impacts of past movements and changes of people, beyond the heraldic claims of their largely self-appointed leaders. They reveal a subtle interweave of cultural relations with power politics and economic expediency. ~ Nicholas Ostler

Why the histories of states should have so persistently insinuated themselves in the place that might have been occupied by peoples merits reflection. ~ James C. Scott

Whatever it is that you think you have discovered. You must forget it. ~ Diane Samuels

Henry Hudson was in his forties when he stepped into the light of history, a seasoned mariner, a man with a strong and resourceful wife and three sons, a man born and raised not only to the sea but to the quest for a northern passage to Asia, who, weaned from infancy on the legends of his predecessors, probably couldn't help but be obsessed by it. ~ Russell Shorto

Naturally we looked at each other. Naturally the single second that passed was more than enough time to enjoy a purified intimacy, to note each other's details and feel the exact weight of each other's history. naturally our essences, peremptorily denuded, exchanged a stunned glance.
Then I shot him in the face. ~ Glen Duncan

The "sayings" of a community, its proverbs, are its characteristic comment upon life; they imply its history, suggest its attitude toward the world and its way of accepting life. Such an idiom makes the finest language any writer can have; and he can never get it with a notebook. He himself must be able to think and feel in that speech - it is a gift from heart to heart. ~ Willa Cather

If nature is the realm of the unspeakable, history is the realm of the speakable. Indeed, no speaking is possible that is not itself historical. Students of history, like students of nature, often believe they can find unbiased, direct views of events. They look in on the lives of others, noting the multitude of ways those lives have been limited by the age in which they were lived. But no one can look in on an age, even if it is one's own age, without looking out of an age as well. There is no refuge outside history for such viewers, any more than there is a vantage outside nature. ~ James P. Carse

There are good people who are dealt a bad hand by fate, and bad people who live long, comfortable, privileged lives. A small twist of fate can save or end a life; random chance is a permanent, powerful player in each of our lives, and in human history as well. ~ Jeff Greenfield

When we start fighting crime by any means necessary we become guilty of the same hypocrisy as law enforcement agencies throughout history, [which] break the rules to get the villains, and [in doing] so become villains themselves. ~ Barrett Brown

A city is not an accident but the result of coherent visions and aims. ~ Leon Krier

Except science now tells us that luck is there whether you acknowledge it or not. And I'm afraid in your case I see the signs of a history of bad luck. Not even a latency so much as a full-blown case going completely ignored for lack of context. ~ Jonathan Lethem

She was at that modulating point between indifference and love, at the stage called having a fancy for. It occurs once in the history of the most gigantic passions, and it is a period when they are in the hands of the weakest will. ~ Thomas Hardy

When you're persistently deleted from history, media, and any other channel to access information – or that information is distorted – it's far worse than physically killing someone. It, instead, induces a form of psychological death. How can you truly be alive, how can you genuinely breathe, when everyone around you believes that you either don't exist or are dead? ~ M.B. Dallocchio

Under the same star... A history from love. i love the romances ~ Tim Lott

If you are not open to the unprecedented, you will repeat history. If you are open to the unprecedented, you will change history. The difference is prayer. ~ Mark Batterson

One of the best gifts you can give a poet is to present them with field guides - to rocks, to stars, to birds, to wildflowers, to trees and bushes, to butterflies, to reptiles and amphibians. Because when you look at anything long enough to be able to identify it, you see far more clearly and you make a tiny beginning at understanding the life, the place, the history of that bird or rock or mammal. ~ Marge Piercy

The history of American art, in a way, begins with Jackson Pollock and his big paintings. This theme of bigness - all painters and sculptors have dealt with it ever since. ~ Michael Heizer

Man, as man, has never realized himself. The greater part of him, his potential being, has always been submerged. What is history if not the endless story of his repeated failures? ~ Henry Miller

Whenever one reads of the determination of the species, or opens a book on natural science and history, in whatever language, one inevitably comes across the name of Linne. ~ Johannes Vilhelm Jensen

I've never looked at a suburban building as being a minor building and an urban building as being a major building. ~ Helmut Jahn

The creators of the Constitution were not purple-robed scholars, sitting in their ivory towers attempting to put abstract theories into play, but men who had come to realize that their system of government was broken. These men desired desperately to repair it. ~ C.L. Gammon

The Al Saud believe they have an asset more powerful than the ballot box: they have Allah. ~ Karen Elliott House

These were the new girls of New York- complete with rapid heartbeats from too much nicotine and coffee. They were nervous and fluttery but completely alluring- the new face of urban femininity. ~ Elizabeth Winder

If cats could write history, their history would be mostly about cats. ~ Eugen Weber

Arguably the most substantive domestic issue facing the republic is the fate of Social Security, with privatization the most frequently mentioned option. For the first time in history, a familiarity with the behavior of the financial markets has become a prerequisite for competent citizenship, apart from its obvious pecuniary value. Using ~ William J. Bernstein

For the first time in history, more people die today from eating too much than from eating too little; more people die from old age than from infectious diseases; and more people commit suicide than are killed by soldiers, terrorists and criminals combined. In the early twenty-first century, the average human is far more likely to die from bingeing at McDonald's than from drought, Ebola or an al-Qaeda attack. Hence ~ Yuval Noah Harari

Not only does free trade have nothing to do with democracy, but in most cases throughout history the two have been inimical. Free trade prospered only at the expense of democracy and the freedom of the majority. ~ Michael Hogan

For whom do you cry, my son?" the Great Spirit asked.
"I do not know."
"Yes, you do. ~ P.J. Parker

The arc of our history is toward more equality being expanded to more and more people. ~ George Takei

For so-called conscious rappers, it is an opportunity to rap about ways to educate others about African American history, politics and even relationships: all of which would be missed if society merely focused on the "hook" and ignored the influence. ~ Carlos Wallace