Western History Quotes

The Victorian era was perhaps the last point in Western history when magic and science were allowed to coexist. ~ Jonathan Auxier

I say we must have a movement that brings those troops home and launch a crusade to transform our school buildings, we launch a crusade to see to it that every citizen has adequate and affordable housing, we launch a crusade to make universal health care. We need not soldiers anymore in the world. We've had enough of them in western history. ~ James Lawson

Every few hundred years in Western history there occurs a sharp transformation. Within a few short decades, society - its worldview, its basic values, its social and political structures, its art, its key institutions - rearranges itself. We are currently living through such a time. ~ Peter Drucker

Aristotle may be regarded as the cultural barometer of Western history. Whenever his influence dominated the scene, it paved the way for one of history's brilliant eras; whenever it fell, so did mankind. ~ Ayn Rand

I am a college-educated American. In all my years of formal schooling, I never read Plato or Aristotle, Homer or Virgil. I knew nothing of Greek and Roman history and barely grasped the meaning of the Middle Ages. Dante was a stranger to me, and so was Shakespeare. The fifteen hundred years of Christianity from the end of the New Testament to the Reformation were a blank page, and I knew only the barest facts about Luther's revolution. I was ignorant of Descartes and Newton. My understanding of Western history began with the Enlightenment. Everything that came before it was lost behind a misty curtain of forgetting. Nobody did this on purpose. Nobody tried to deprive me of my civilizational patrimony. But nobody felt any obligation to present it to me and my generation in an orderly, coherent fashion. Ideas have consequences - and so does their lack. ~ Rod Dreher

I'm not writing a book of Western history,' I tell him. 'I've written enough history books to know this isn't one. I'm writing about something else. A marriage, I guess. Deadwood was just a blank space in the marriage. Why waste time on it?'
Rodman is surprised. So am I, actually - I have never formulated precisely what it is I have been doing, but the minute I say it I know I have said it right. What interests me in all these papers is not Susan Burling Ward, the novelist and illustrator, and not Oliver Ward the engineer, and not the West they spend their lives in. What really interests me is how two such unlike particles clung together, and under what strains, rolling downhill into their future until they reached the angle of repose where I knew them. That's where the interest is. That's where the meaning will be if I find any. ~ Wallace Stegner

Economically, legally, and politically powerless throughout much of western history, women have been linked to nature and the unknowable through metaphors of the body while the masculine has signified culture and mental activity. ~ Whitney Chadwick

There were some ages in Western history that have occasionally been called Dark. They were dark, it is said, because in them learning declined, and progress paused, and men labored under the pall of belief. A cause-effect relationship is frequently felt to exist between the pause and the belief. ~ Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke Of Norfolk

I get a little sick of these New Yorkers who want me to make some psychic thing, like 'The Left-Handed Gun.' They don't know anything about Western history. ~ Howard Hawks

The idea of labor, of hard work, leading to increased productivity was so novel, so radical, in the overall span of Western history that most ordinary people, most of those who labored, could scarcely believe what was happening to them. Labor had been so long thought to be the natural and inevitable consequence of necessity and poverty that most people still associated it with slavery and servitude. Therefore any possibility of oppression, any threat to the colonists' hard earned prosperity, any hint of reducing them to the povery of other nations, was especially frightening; for it seemed likely to slide them back into the traditional status of servants or slaves, into the older world where labor was merely a painful necessity and not a source of prosperity. ~ Gordon S. Wood

But can't you even imagine what it must feel like to have a true home? I don't mean heaven. I mean a real earthly home. Not some fortress you bought and built up and have to keep everybody locked in or out. A real home. Not some place you went to and invaded and slaughtered people to get. Not some place you claimed, snatched because you got the guns. Not some place you stole from the people living there, but your own home, where if you go back past your great-great-grandparents, past theirs, and theirs, past the whole of Western history, past the beginning of organized knowledge, past pyramids and poison bows, on back to when rain was new, before plants forgot they could sing and birds thought they were fish, back when God said Good! Good!-- there, right there where you know your own people were born and lived and died. Imagine that, Pat. That place. Who was God talking to if not to my people living in my home?"
"You preaching, Reverend."
"No, I'm talking to you, Pat. I'm talking to you. ~ Toni Morrison

Quality sex is only possible with true sexual equality. We've never--at any point in Western history--had a time where the majority of the population valued women's ways of orgasm as equal to a man's. It's time to change history. ~ Laurie Mintz

The political terms 'will' and 'popular will' have a long track record in Western history going back to Rousseau. That record is profoundly anti-democratic, essentially inviting elites to interpret what the common people believe and want. In litigious modern America, that would be a judicial elite telling us how we meant to vote or should have voted. ~ John Leo

...the modern bias in contemporary Western scholarship (which has spread to the rest of the world as well) insists upon focusing all attention on the formation of the modern world and 'modernity.' By directing attention to a time period rather than to a region, Western scholars can place the West at the center of any discussion, and subordinate backward Asia to Western history, without explicitly condemning Asian cultures and polities or arguing for a narrowly Eurocentric view of the world. Nevertheless, modern history is effectively a racist pursuit that not only elevates white Westerners above all others, but also actively denigrates Asian history. ~ Peter A. Lorge

Western history has been a history of deed done, actions performed and results achieved. ~ Arthur Erickson

In Ancient Greek literature male poets tend not simply to portray women as lecherous but to attribute to them a species of lust different from that of males: a subhuman and automatic reflex, an animalistic urge. Sappho is important because she gives a fulle human voice to female desire for the first time in Western history. Since she defiantly chooses the quintessential love-object Helen of Troy as her freethinking agent, she seems fully conscious of the revolutionary claim she is making. ~ Sappho

Haiti was founded by African slaves who rose against their European masters, had a revolution, and created a new state. There is no other such event in Western history. ~ Madison Smartt Bell

As for the third Official Reason: exposing Western Hypocrisy - how much more exposed can they be? Which decent human being on earth harbors any illusions about it? These are people whose histories are spongy with the blood of others. Colonialism, apartheid, slavery, ethnic cleansing, germ warfare, chemical weapons - they virtually invented it all. ~ Arundhati Roy

There are a set of men who go about making purchases upon credit, and buying estates they have not wherewithal to pay for; and having done this, their next step is to fill the newspapers with paragraphs of the scarcity of money and the necessity of a paper emission, then to have a legal tender under the pretense of supporting its credit, and when out, to depreciate it as fast as they can, get a deal of it for a little price, and cheat their creditors; and this is the concise history of paper money schemes. ~ Thomas Paine

America, I don't think you can change history." All the same, his expression looked hopeful.
"Sure we can. Besides, who'd ever know about it but you and me? ~ Kiera Cass

A broader reading of history shows that appeasement, no matter how it is labeled, never fulfills the hopes of the appeasers. ~ Ronald Reagan

Pluralist societies are not accidents of history. They are a product of enlightened education and continuous investment by governments and all of civil society in recognizing and celebrating the diversity of the world's peoples. ~ Aga Khan IV

We peruse one ideal, that of bringing people together in peace, irrespective of race, religion and political convictions, for the benefit of mankind. ~ Juan Antonio Samaranch

History does seem to repeat itself hence it's mindboggling to still hear the 'avoid all negative people' speeches from, of all people, supposedly important spiritual teachers. Ironically, their congregations would probably be the ones hiding their faces from the accuracies of truth speakers like Christ. Now, Christ was the complete opposite of negative, however the danger is that truth is often misunderstood as negativity by those who are constantly taught to only seek flattery. ~ Criss Jami

History is not a procession of illustrious people. It's about what happens to a people. Millions of anonymous people is what history is about. ~ James Baldwin

If you live long enough, you see the same eyes in different people ~ Star Wars: The Force Awakens

This is in fact what shamanism is all about, what the end of history is all about, what psychedelic drugs are all about, we are edge-walking on an ontological transformation of what it means to be human. ~ Terence McKenna

We are the first nation in the history of the world to go to the poorhouse in an automobile. ~ Will Rogers

History will remember the inhabitants of this century as the people who went from Kitty Hawk to the moon in 66 years, only to languish for the next 30 in low Earth orbit. At the core of the risk-free society is a self-indulgent failure of nerve. ~ Buzz Aldrin

Liberals correctly perceive the Reagan record as their most dangerous enemy. Why? Because what happened during the 1980s - prosperity at home the longest period of peacetime growth in this nation's history, strength abroad - directly contradicts every liberal belief. Bill Clinton has confused many about the 1980s and the Reagan legacy. His patently false mantra states, "The rich got richer, the poor got poorer. The rich didn't pay their fair share, etc." ~ Rush Limbaugh

It was from him, and from this picture in particular, that Henri Cartier-Bresson had developed the ideal of the decisive moment. Photography seemed to me, as I stood there in the white gallery with its rows of pictures and its press of murmuring spectators, an uncanny art like no other. One moment, in all of history, was captured, but the moments before and after it disappeared into the onrush of time; only that selected moment itself was privileged, saved, for no other reason than its having been picked out by the camera's eye. ~ Teju Cole

If I have nothing but a room full of books, it is enough for me to survive life. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Literary history is the great morgue where all seek the dead ones whom they love, or to whom they are related. ~ Heinrich Heine

I spent six years at United and I owe them everything that I am today. I made history at United and won many trophies. It was a pleasure to play at Old Trafford. ~ Cristiano Ronaldo

There is a history of mental breakdowns in my family. It will never happen to me but it has happened to others in the family. ~ Brian Cox

Jackson couldn't bear to see Allie like this. He pulled her to him and, dropping his mouth to hers, kissed her. She leaned into him, letting him draw her even closer as the kiss deepened. Fireworks lit the night, booming in a blaze of glittering light before going dark again. Desire ignited his blood. He wanted Allie like he'd never wanted anyone or anything before. ~ B. J. Daniels

Through our entire history we have become accustomed to pushing [animals] around in ways dictated by our own wants and needs without much regard for theirs. ~ Stanley Schmidt

Modern science developed in the context of western religious thought, was nurtured in universities first established for religious reasons, and owes some of its greatest discoveries and advances to scientists who themselves were deeply religious. ~ Kenneth R. Miller

What was then produced of art and of thought has never been surpassed and very rarely equalled, and the stamp of it is upon all the art and all the thought of the Western world. And yet this full stature of greatness came to pass at a time when the mighty civilizations of the ancient world had perished and the shadow of "effortless barbarism" was dark upon the earth. In that black and fierce world a little centre of white-hot spiritual energy was at work. A new civilization had arisen in Athens, unlike all that had gone before. ~ Edith Hamilton

I have read somewhere or other,-in Dionysius of Halicarnassus, I think,-that history is philosophy teaching by examples. ~ Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke

Natures and features last until the grave ~ Siddhartha Mukherjee

More than ever, we are dealing with the history of the masses, and no history of individuals. Less than ever, it is possible to predict the near future ... ~ Andrei I. Shingarev

'Days' has always been strong as an icon in TV history, and it's still going on strong and represents the genre of daytime drama so well. I'm proud to be a part of it. ~ Alison Sweeney

The pursuit of curiosity about the basic facts of nature has proven, with few exceptions throughout the history of medical science, to be the route by which the successful drugs and devices of modern medicine were discovered. ~ Arthur Kornberg

History remembers the darkest moments. ~ Scott Reintgen

One might also say that history is not about the past. If you think about it, no one ever lived in the past. Washington, Jefferson, John Adams, and their contemporaries didn't walk about saying, "Isn't this fascinating living in the past! Aren't we picturesque in our funny clothes!" They lived in the present. The difference is it was their present, not ours. They were caught up in the living moment exactly as we are, and with no more certainty of how things would turn out than we have. ~ David McCullough

The book is worth reading, in part because it is enjoyable to read of
other people's folly, not to mention their avarice and stupidity."
Roger Lowenstein, reviewing "Devil Take the Hindmost: a History
of Financial Speculation", WSJ 6-1-99 ~ Roger Lowenstein

The power of a bold idea uttered publicly in defiance of dominant opinion cannot be easily measured. Those special people who speak out in such a way as to shake up not only the self-assurance of their enemies, but the complacency of their friends, are precious catalysts for change. ~ Howard Zinn

Aligning your body clock to the new environment requires a phase shift. It takes one day per time zone to shift. Advance or retard your body clock as many days before your trip as the number of time zones you'll be crossing. Before traveling east, get into sunlight early in the day. Before traveling west, avoid sunlight early by keeping the curtains drawn, and instead expose yourself to bright light in the evening, to simulate what would be late afternoon sun in your destination. Once you're on the plane, if you're westbound, keep the overhead reading lamp on, even if it is your home bedtime. When you arrive in the western city, exercise lightly by taking a walk in the sun. That sunlight will delay the production of melatonin in your body. If you're on an eastbound plane, wear eye shades to cover your eyes two hours or so before sunset in your destination city, to acclimate yourself to the new "dark" time. ~ Daniel J. Levitin

Let that be a reminder to you that the past is one thing, but what we make of it, the conclusions we draw, is another. History can be many things, depending on how we read it, just as the future can be many things, depending on how we live it. There is no inevitability to any historical occurrence, only what people will allow to take place. And it is by dreaming first that we get to new realities. ~ Yann Martel

Each being in the universe yearns for the free energy necessary for survival and development. Each existence resists extinction. The consequent history of violence in the universe is as inevitable as the gravitational pull between the Earth and the Sun. ~ Brian Swimme

Apart from letters, it is the vulgar custom of the moment to deride the thinkers of the Victorian and Edwardian eras; yet there has not been, in all history, another agewhen so much sheer mental energy was directed toward creating a fairer social order. ~ Ellen Glasgow

There are no doubts that western governments are willfully inducing radiation sickness into segments of their city populations. ~ Steven Magee

In the history of the collective as in the history of the individual, everything depends on the development of consciousness. ~ Carl Jung

So this book is like a thank you. We want everyone to know the story of how four Western Sydney teenagers picked up their instruments and dreamt of being one of the biggest bands in the world. ~ 5 Seconds Of Summer

How real is history? Is it just an enormous soup so full of disparate ingredients that it is uncharacterizable? ~ Thomas Cahill

What did I learn and internalize from the experience? That our challenge is to let go of our old stories that defined us and forgive others and ourselves. Dropping those stories will free us from the burdens and restrictions that have prevented us from writing new ones. The spirits - our loved ones on the other side, our angels or guides, Fred - want us to do that in order to heal the deep rift in the world, so our future includes an earth that is healed and whole and tended to by her inhabitants with respect. Their message is to love without conditions, to show compassion, to be as authentic as we are able, to strip away the lies we've told ourselves, and to remember who we really are and who we came here to be. We are spiritual beings constrained by our human experience, defined at this time in history by a distorted lens of perception and perspective, in a state of spiritual amnesia and asleep at the wheel of life. It's time to wake up. ~ Colette Baron Reid

We recriminalized black life. Incarceration rates since the 1908s have gone through the roof, overwhelmingly black males, women and Hispanics to some extent. Essentially re-doing what happened under Reconstruction. That's the history of African Americans - so how can any one say there's no problem. Sure, racism is serious, but it's worse than that. ~ Noam Chomsky

GOD IS SO WONDERFULLY GENEROUS in his self-disclosure. He has not revealed himself to this race of rebels in some stinting way, but in nature, by his Spirit, in his Word, in great events in redemptive history, in institutions that he ordained to unveil his purposes and his nature, even in our very makeup. (We bear the imago Dei.) ~ D. A. Carson

It has been said that although God cannot alter the past, historians can
it is perhaps because they can be useful to Him in this respect that He tolerates their existence. ~ Samuel Butler

Twitter is great and it's glorious and it's easy, but if somebody comes up with something kind of like Twitter tomorrow, that's better or smarter or more useful, in three weeks time, Twitter could more or less be history because that's how fast things go. ~ Neil Gaiman

Both humanity's capacity to innovate and the incentives to innovate are greater today than at any other time in history. ~ Ben Bernanke

None of us can truly know what we mean to other people, and none of us can know what our future self will experience. History and philosophy ask us to remember these mysteries, to look around at friends, family, humanity, at the surprises life brings - the endless possibilities that living offers - and to persevere. There is love and insight to live for, bright moments to cherish, and even the possibility of happiness, and the chance of helping someone else through his or her own troubles. Know that people, through history and today, understand how much courage it takes to stay. Bear witness to the night side of being human and the bravery it entails, and wait for the sun. If we meditate on the record of human wisdom we may find there reason enough to persist and find our way back to happiness. The first step is to consider the arguments and evidence and choose to stay. After that, anything may happen. First, choose to stay. ~ Jennifer Michael Hecht

White men in North America are the beneficiaries of the single biggest affirmative action program in world history. It's called world history. ~ Michael Kimmel

Black History Month should be celebrated everyday. It's a month that's kind of sad to me, because I am reminded of the struggles that people before us had to go through for us to be able to live comfortably today. ~ Tamara James

Having no history, I decide, is a blessing. I wouldn't want to be cursed with the memory of a lifetime of mistakes. ~ Anne Heltzel