It must be admitted that there is a degree of instability which is inconsistent with civilization. But, on the whole, the great ages have been unstable ones.
There is nothing to be learned from history anymore. We're in science fiction now.
We have let houses that our fathers built fall into pieces, and now we try to break into Oriental palaces that our fathers never knew.
In a decaying society, art, if it is truthful, must also reflect decay. And unless it wants to break faith with its social function, art must show the world as changeable. And help to change it.
Nothing is ever done until everyone is convinced that it ought to be done, and has been convinced for so long that it is now time to do something else.
What experience and history teach is this-- that people and governments never have learned anything from history.
The kind uncles and aunts of the race are more esteemed than its true spiritual fathers and mothers.
History is merely a list of surprises. It can only prepare us to be surprised yet again.
My connection to the past, like any Historian's, is through the stuff that's left behind. It's not an imaginative connection, although imagination is part of it. It's about documents , it's about sources, it's about clues, it's about the leavings, the shards, the remnants of people who once live and don't live anymore. Without the documents, there's no history. And women left very few documents behind.
Well behaved women rarely make history.
...the first man to use abusive language instead of his fists was the founder of civilization.
Time is like a drug. It kills you if you have too much of it.
History warns us... that it is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies and to end as superstitions.
History is made by stupid people. Clever people wouldn't even try. If you want your name in the history books than do something dumb before you die.
Education is a paradox: knowledge is power and can provide freedom on one hand, and on the other, I feel no greater bondage and burden than from that which I have learned in my schooling. Ignorance just may be bliss. Great psychological disturbances result from the knowledge of exactly how screwed up things are. History tells us that the wise typically suffer the most. I don't know any truly happy environmentalists, animal rights activists, or college-educated hippies. We complain to drown out our misery that is the result of what we've been exposed to. I think we would be happier if we never knew. But, after all, I do not regret the load which I am burdened with, only the fact that I do not possess coping skills sufficient enough to let me be at peace with the world..
The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subjected people to carry arms. History shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subjected peoples to carry arms have prepared their own fall.
History teaches that war begins when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap.
History has remembered the kings and warriors, because they destroyed; Art has remembered the people, because they created.
ëëThe most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subjected people to carry arms. History shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subjected peoples to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that the underdog is a sine qua non ["something essential" lit. "without which not"] for the overthrow of any sovereignty. So let's not have any native militia or police.íí
