Explaining History Quotes & Sayings

Scrumpy," said Beverley. "What's the difference?" Beverley thought about it for a moment or two. "It's not made in a factory," she said. "So, no quality control then?" "Are you going to talk about it or drink it?" I took a swig - it was tart, alcoholic and tasted of apples. About what I look for in a cider, really. — Ben Aaronovitch

Throughout history, clothes represented who you were; they are a great vehicle for explaining who you are. During the Ching dynasty, for example, what you wore and how it was made reflected your status in society. People could literally read your clothes like a book, just by its color and how it was embroidered. — Iris Apfel

Painting is a hobby for me. — Renee O'Connor

History had its own way of explaining things. The way historians explain things is by telling a story. — Donald Kagan

Hindsight is not only clearer than perception-in-the-moment but also unfair to those who actually lived through the moment. — Edwin S. Shneidman

Symbols give us our identity, our self image, our way of explaining ourselves to ourselves and to others. Symbols in turn determine the kinds of stories we tell, and the stories we tell determine the kind of history we make and remake. — Mary Robinson

If Christianity is true, this changes EVERYTHING. Christ's very last words to us in scripture were: "Behold, I make all things new." (Rev. 21:5) I hope you remember that most moving line in the most moving movie ever made, The Passion Of The Christ, when Christ turns to His mother on the way to Calvary, explaining the need for the Cross and the blood and the agony: "See, Mother, I make all things new." I hope you remember that line with your tear ducts, which connect to the heart, as well as with your ears, which connect to the brain. Christ changed every human being he ever met. In fact, He changed history, splitting it open like a coconut and inserting eternity into the split between B.C. and A.D. If anyone claims to have met Him without being changed, he has not met Him at all. When you touch Him, you touch lightning. — Peter Kreeft

Following the path of earlier unificationists, one of Eddington's aims was to reduce the contingencies in the description of nature, for example, by explaining the fundamental constants of physics rather than accepting them as merely experimental data. One of these constants was the fine-structure constant ... , which entered prominently in Dirac's theory and was known to be about 1/137. — Helge Kragh

The New Testament is a brutal destroyer of human illusions. If you follow Jesus and don't end up dead, it appears you have some explaining to do. The stark signifier of the human condition is one who spoke up for love and justice and was done to death for his pains. The traumatic truth of human history is a mutilated body. — Terry Eagleton

I think there is a point in every teenager's life where they are forced to come into themselves. — Shailene Woodley

We live in a moment in which old conflicts, much altered during their subterraneous years, have boiled up again. The struggle to own the past so that it can be made to serve contemporary interests has led to gross distortions. But it is true also that the experience of any generation is inevitably a warped lens through which to view the thought and the actions of any previous generation, especially when there is a lack of rigorous historical perspective to correct for these distortions. This second consideration may go some way toward explaining the fact that there are not two sides to what would otherwise be a great national controversy. — Marilynne Robinson

Man is the only mammal whose normal method of locomotion is to walk on two legs. A pattern of mammal behavior that emerges only once in the whole history of life on earth takes a great deal of explaining. — Elaine Morgan

At a minimum, in explaining evolutionary pathways through time, the constraints imposed by history rise to equal prominence with the immediate advantages of adaptation. — Stephen Jay Gould

Magic is the only way to describe it, climbing pitch after pitch of the most perfect, beautifully sculpted granite in the world. — Ron Kauk

Carmen sat up when she heard a familiar trill from her computer. It was an instant message from Bee.
Beezy3: Packing. Do you have my purple sock with the heart on the ankle?
Carmabelle: No. Like I'd wear your socks.
Carmen looked from her computer screen down to her feet. To her dismay, her socks were two faintly different shades of purple. She rotated her foot to get a view of her anklebone.
Carmabelle: Ahem. Might possibly have sock. — Ann Brashares

Throughout its history, the United States has always had a class system. It is not only directed by the top 1 percent and supported by a contented middle class. We can no longer ignore the stagnant, expendable bottom layers of society in explaining the national identity. The — Nancy Isenberg

Anyways, trying to express yourself to the press is often like arguing with a hysterical person. — Ezra Koenig

My grandest boyhood ambition was to be a professor of history at Notre Dame. Although what I do now is just a different way of working with history, I suppose.") He told me about his blind-in-one-eye canary rescued from a Woolworth's who woke him singing every morning of his boyhood; the bout of rheumatic fever that kept him in bed for six months; and the queer little antique neighborhood library with frescoed ceilings ("torn down now, alas") where he'd gone to get away from his house. About Mrs. De Peyster, the lonely old heiress he'd visited after school, a former Belle of Albany and local historian who clucked over Hobie and fed him Dundee cake ordered from England in tins, who was happy to stand for hours explaining to Hobie every single item in her china cabinet and who had owned, among other things, the mahogany sofa - rumored to have belonged to General Herkimer - that got him interested in furniture in the first place. — Donna Tartt

Whether you're explaining where pets go when they die or teaching your child to recycle, your philosophies have ramifications. For the rest of history, echos of your voice will be heard. — Beth Ann Fennelly

An important book for understanding the history of our economic boom & bust cycles. It's an eye-opening account of how we are repeating the mistakes of the 1760's, 1850's, and 1920's. The author is a brilliant writer and is so good at explaining even the most complex subjects in a compelling & easy to understand way. The next crash will be painful but it's important to understand what is being done to us, and how we can learn from history and take action. — Thom Hartmann

If the Palestinian people really wish to decide that they will battle to the very end to prevent partition or annexation of even an inch of their ancestral soil, then I have to concede that that is their right. I even think that a sixty-year rather botched experiment in marginal quasi-statehood is something that the Jewish people could consider abandoning. It represents barely an instant in our drawn-out and arduous history, and it's already been agreed even by the heirs of Ze'ev Jabotinsky that the whole scheme is unrealizable in 'Judaea and Samaria,' let alone in Gaza or Sinai. But it's flat-out intolerable to be solicited to endorse a side-by-side Palestinian homeland and then to discover that there are sinuous two-faced apologists explaining away the suicide-murder of Jewish civilians in Tel Aviv, a city which would be part of a Jewish state or community under any conceivable 'solution.' There's that word again ... — Christopher Hitchens

A couple of years ago I was seated in an auditorium in Detroit where Reverend Cleage was explaining to a conference of priests that what they called "black separatists" were in reality men who recognized the implacability of a white-imposed separation. — John Howard Griffin

Simulation is a copy which has no prototype, the imitation of something that does not exist, and has never existed except than in the simulator's mind. — Anonymous

In the space of a single year, a crumbling rural village had sprouted an army town, like a great parasitical growth. The former peacetime aspect of the place was barely discernible. The village pond was where the dragoons watered their horses, infantry exercised in the orchards, soldiers lay in the meadows sunning themselves. All the peacetime institutions collapsed, only what was needed for war remained. Hedges and fences were broken or simply torn down for easier access, and everywhere there were large signs giving directions to military traffic. While roofs caved in, and furniture was gradually used up as firewood, telephone lines and electricity cables were installed. Cellars were extended outwards and downwards to make bomb shelters for the residents; the removed earth was dumped in the gardens. The village no longer knew any demarcations or distinctions between thine and mine.
pp. 36-37 — Ernst Junger

The dentuso is cruel and able and strong and intelligent. But I was more intelligent than he was. Perhaps not, he thought. Perhaps I was only better armed. — Ernest Hemingway,

Feed me. If you don't, all the way to Rosalinda's, I'm explaining the entirety of the history of Angel, the vampire with a soul given to him by gypsies as punishment for him killing one of their own. This history will range from Buffy, The Vampire Slayer through to Angel, his own TV show. I'll also add my opinions on why they should never have cancelled Angel. I'll tell you now, this is multi-part and doesn't all have to do with the fact that David Boreanaz is hot. And, if you delay, I might even have time to get into why I think Joss Whedon should be recommended for sainthood. — Kristen Ashley

Spend your 'different points' wisely. — Havoc Pennington

You're the one person whose opinion I care about. When I'm with you, the past dissappears, and I'm a better person. — Cindi Madsen

As of early 2016, the sixty-two richest people in the world were worth as much as the poorest 3.6 billion people! Since the world's population is about 7.2 billion, it means that these sixty-two billionaires together hold as much wealth as the entire bottom half of humankind.37 The — Yuval Noah Harari