Ranke Quotes & Sayings

History is no criminal court — Leopold Von Ranke

Please don't fall into the trap of believing that I am terribly dogmatical about [the goto statement]. I have the uncomfortable feeling that others are making a religion out of it, as if the conceptual problems of programming could be solved by a single trick, by a simple form of coding discipline! — Edsger Dijkstra

Confronted by a Church that has ceased to manifest God's mercy and intimate connection with humankind - that has converted Christ into a grim and joyless adjunct to the policing of bedrooms and marital intercourse - men and women can no longer see themselves as beloved of God, only as impure and reprehensible. — Uta Ranke-Heinemann

According to Jerome, Mary laid the foundations of virginity for both sexes, and the moral superiority of virginity becomes clear in her person. The reality was the other way around: Virginity was not prized because Mary was always a virgin, rather Mary was made a perpetual virgin because virginity was so highly praised. — Uta Ranke-Heinemann

The Holy Bible is an abyss. It is impossible to explain how profound it is, impossible to explain how simple it is. — Ernest Hello

In schoolbooks and in literature we can separate ecclesiastical and political history; in the life of mankind they are intertwined. — Leopold Von Ranke

You have reckoned that history ought to judge the past and to instruct the contemporary world as to the future. The present attempt does not yield to that high office. It will merely tell how it really was. — Leopold Von Ranke

Sex is an aspect of human existence that has fallen prey in special measure to a very special form of theological science: the theological outgrowth or offshoot known as moral theology. Its biblical foundations are meager in the sense that nothing of the kind exists in the New Testament, so it has had to achieve its ambition largely by dint of its own efforts. — Uta Ranke-Heinemann

To history has been assigned the office of judging the past, of instructing the present for the benefit of future ages. To such high offices this work does not aspire. It wants only to show what actually [essentially?] happened (wie es eigentlich gewesen). — Leopold Von Ranke

Every generation is equidistant from God. — Leopold Von Ranke

It is striking how history, when resting on the memory of men, always touches the bounds of mythology. — Leopold Von Ranke

All ages are equidistant from eternity, and just as immediately accessible to God's presence. — Leopold Von Ranke

Ah for pittie, wil ranke Winters rage,
These bitter blasts neuer ginne tasswage?
The keene cold blowes throug my beaten hyde,
All as I were through the body gryde.
My ragged rontes all shiver and shake,
As doen high Towers in an earthquake:
They wont in the wind wagge their wrigle tailes,
Perke as Peacock: but nowe it auales. — Edmund Spenser

He who overcomes himself is divine. Most see their ruin before their eyes; but they go on into it. — Leopold Von Ranke

Jesus was a friend of women, the first and practically the last friend women had in the church. — Uta Ranke-Heinemann

Calvin was virtually the founder of America. — Leopold Von Ranke

Neither blindness nor ignorance corrupts people and governments. They soon realize where the path they have taken is leading them. But there is an impulse within them, favored by their natures and reinforced by their habits, which they do not resist; it continues to propel them forward as long as they have a remnant of strength. He who overcomes himself is divine. Most see their ruin before their eyes; but they go on into it.1 Leopold von Ranke — Joachim Fest

Yeah, go ahead and try to be your daddy, baby," the guy eggs her on. "You fall short!" "Haven't you heard?" she shouts out the window at him. "I'm a mama's girl!" And she speeds up even more. "Dylan! — Penelope Douglas

A pen in my hand, a glaring in my mind,
A tyrant could not subdue me. — Nida Mahmoed

Sexual pessimism and hostility toward the pleasures of the flesh are a legacy from the ancient world which Christianity has preserved in a special measure to this day. — Uta Ranke-Heinemann

Most humans recognize their ruin, but they carry on regardless. — Leopold Von Ranke

For most Americans, my Chinese music feels like a novelty, and it's not what it is for me. — Abigail Washburn

Is the world divided into mind and matter, and, if so, what is mind, what is matter? Is mind subject to matter, or is it possessed of independent powers? Has the universe any unity or purpose? Is it evolving towards some goal? Are there really laws of nature, or do we believe in them only because of our innate love of order? Is man what he seems to the astronomer, a tiny lump of impure carbon and water impotently crawling on a small and unimportant planet? Or is he what he appears to Hamlet? Is there a way of living that is noble and another that is base, or are all ways of living merely futile? ... To such questions no answers can be found in the laboratory.'23 — John C. Lennox

To call ourselves a Microcosme, or little world, I thought it onely a pleasant trope of Rhetorick, till my neare judgement and second thoughts told me there was a reall truth therein: for first wee are a rude masse, and in the ranke of creatures, which only are, and have a dull kinde of being not yet priviledged with life, or preferred to sense or reason; next we live the life of plants, the life of animals, the life of men, and at last the life of spirits, running on in one mysterious nature those five kinds of existence, which comprehend the creatures not onely of world, but of the Universe. — Thomas Browne