We Got History Quotes & Sayings

How would it be," she asked them coldly as they left the classroom [Prof Binns, History subject], "if I refused to lend you my notes this year?"
"We'd fail our O.W.L.s," said Ron. "If you want that on your conscience, Hermoine ... "
"Well, you'd deserve it," she snapped. "You don't even try to listen to him, do you?"
"We do try," said Ron. "We just haven't got your brains or your concentration
you're just cleverer than we are
is it nice to rub it in? — J.K. Rowling

Now, I cannot imagine where women ever got the idea that they must be perfect in order to be loved or successful. (Ha ha ha! Just kidding! I can totally imagine: We got it from every single message society has ever sent us! Thanks, all of human history!) — Elizabeth Gilbert

We've already got gays in the military. We always have had. World War Two, the Western Allies had fourteen million men in uniform. Any kind of reasonable probability says at least a million of them were gay. And we won that war, as I recall, last time I checked with the history books. We won it big time. — Lee Child

We face a dilemma because although everybody is better off than they've ever been at any time in our history, we've also got the biggest gap between the rich and the poor that we've ever had, and we've potentially got a planet which is going to go bust any day. — Stuart Rose

Long before history began we men have got together apart from the women and done things. We had time. — C.S. Lewis

It is not a first time in history that we have got people who have sold out and subverted the ideas for which they stood for in the past. — Auliq Ice

Life doesn't just happen; it's constructed through the history of power. And that's something I am interested in and so is the art world: a world that's trying to engage socially, with a leftist slant, to work out how we got here. — Mike Mills

In the course of the history of natural science, it always happens that profound or true thoughts or true facts were always either distorted or flattened out. The danger, especially of distortion, is particularly great in the case of orgonomy. We must be scientific, we cannot be political in these matters. And I personally declare that I will be the first to fight with all my strength, with whatever I've got against such a distortion of our principles. — Wilhelm Reich

A Klee painting named 'Angelus Novus' shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress. — Walter Benjamin

This tottered ensign of my ancestors
Which swept the desert shore of that dead sea
Whereof we got the name of Mortimer,
Will I advance upon these castle-walls.
Drums, strike alarum, raise them from their sport,
And sing aloud the knell of Gaveston! — Christopher Marlowe

You know who we been living with for the past week? We been living with the only man in history who ever took a piece in the ladies' can of a Boston & Maine train. When the conductor caught him in there with his Winter Carnival date she screamed, 'He trapped me!' and that's how he got his name. This is the famous Trapper John. God, Trapper, I speak for the Duke as well as myself when I say it's an honor to have you with us. Have a martini, Trapper. — Richard Hooker

We've had the most massive creation of wealth for people a lot younger than those who formerly got wealth in the history of the world. The world is full of young people who really want to get rich, and when I left school nobody thought it was a reasonable possibility. — Charlie Munger

The saying goes that history repeats itself; personal histories do the same. We can gather the lessons of others' lives through observation, conversation, and by seeking advice. We can use the automatic system to find out who the happy people are, and the reflective system to evaluate how they got to be that way. Pursuing happiness need not be a lonely endeavor. In fact, throwing in our lot with others may be a very good way of coping with the disappointments of choice. — Sheena Iyengar

One is astonished in the study of history at the recurrence of the idea that evil must be forgotten, distorted, skimmed over. We must not remember that Daniel Webster got drunk but only that he was a splendid constitutional lawyer. We must forget that George Washington was a slave owner ... and simply remember the things we regard as creditable and inspiring. The difficulty, of course, with this philosophy is that history loses its value as an incentive and example; it paints perfect man and noble nations, but it does not tell the truth. — W.E.B. Du Bois

I was missing lectures leading up to an essay test, so I went downstairs & got my textbook & pretended to study, with Animal Planet playing in the background. Everyone we learned about was either white or some sort of predecessor of the white, Christian world--as if the Stone Age, Bronze Age & Iron Age were just Greek & Roman stepping stones. As if everyone outside of Europe was still grunting & digging for grubs. As if China, centuries before Jesus started squalling in his crib, hadn't already kicked Europe's ass in technology & art. — L. Tam Holland

What makes the voice pathetic is that it doesn't know what kind of people it's reaching. Us. No one hears it, except us. This Age wanted heroes. It got us instead: carefully constructed, but immobile. Subtle but, unfit to take up the burden of the times. It happens. A whole generation of washouts. History says stand up, and we totter and collapse, weeping, moved, but not sufficient. — Tony Kushner

The face of the angel of history is turned toward the past. Where we perceived a chain of events, he sees a single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistably propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. The storm is what we call progress. — Walter Benjamin

Environmental historians ... insist that we have got to go ... down to the earth itself as an agent and presence in history. Here we will discover even more fundamental forces at work over time. And to appreciate those forces we must now and then get out of parliamentary chambers, out of birthing rooms and factories, get out of doors altogether, and ramble into fields, woods, and the open air. It is time we bought a good set of walking shoes, and we cannot avoid getting some mud on them. — Donald Worster

You wouldn't think that people would believe that we all got so incredibly beat up - in so many interesting ways - from a bear attack. Especially not when Carmel is sporting a bite mark that is a spot-on match for wounds found at one of the most horrifying crime scenes in recent history. But I never fail to be surprised by what people will believe. — Kendare Blake

We are living in the richest country in the history of the world, yet we have the highest rate of childhood poverty of almost any major] country and millions of people are struggling to put food on the table. It is my absolute conviction that everyone in this country deserves a minimum standard of living and we've got to go forward in the fight to make that happen. — Bernie Sanders

I simply don't understand the refugee crisis. The history of humanity can be told through a story of migration and settlement. If I can't protect my family, I'm coming to where you are; I'm just coming. It's a round world, and we've all got to get on with it and move on. — Paul Bettany

The emotional pattern seems to be something like, "[Karl] Polanyi, a person of the left like me, says many true things, beautifully. Therefore his tales about what happened in economic history must be true." Marx before him got similar treatment. Lately the more eloquent of the environmentalists, such as Wendell Berry, get it too. People want to believe that beauty is truth. A supporting emotional frame on the left arises from the very idea of historical progress: "We must be able to do so much better than this wretched capitalism." It is not true, but it motivates. — Deirdre N. McCloskey

Hold onto one thought: You're not important. You're not anything. Some day the load we're carrying with us may help someone. But even when we had the books on hand, a long time ago, we didn't use what we got out of them. We went right on insulting the dead. We went right on spitting in the graves of all the poor ones who died before us. We're going to meet a lot of lonely people in the next week and the next month and the next year. And when they ask us what we're doing, you can say, We're remembering. That's where we'll win out in the long run. And some day we'll remember so much that we'll build the biggest goddam steamshovel in history and dig the biggest grave of all time and shove war in and cover it up. — Ray Bradbury

It's amazing to be a Puerto Rican fighter, we have a great history of fighters. I say this all the time, 'I'm Puerto Rican, raised in Philadelphia so I got the best of both worlds. I got the Puerto Rican power and the Philly toughness. It comes a long way. — Danny Garcia

All of Europe, as far as we knew, was gone. It might as well not be there anymore. Russia was gone. By the time you got to wondering where America went there just wasn't any more room for it in your brain. A world without America just couldn't happen - the global economy would collapse. Every two penny warlord and dictator in the Third World would have a field day. It just wasn't possible. It would mean global chaos. It would mean the of history as we knew it.
Which was exactly what happened. — David Wellington

This is the war where we change. This is the trickster war. It's where we disappear, just like they desire us disappear. I spoke it you before: They wish us blank," he said, gesturing without thinking at Dr. Trefusis, who was the nearest exemplar of the white race. "They want us with no history and no memory. They want us empty as paper so they can write on us, so we ain't nothing but a price and an owner's name and a list of tasks. And that's what we'll give them. We'll give them your Nothing. We'll give them my William Williams and Henry Henry. We'll slip through and we'll change to who we must needs be and I will be all sly and have my delightful picaresque japes. But at the end of it, when it's over, I shall be one thing. I shall be one man, fixed, and not have to take no other name. I shall be one person steadily for some years."
"This is why we got to win ... If we ever wish to be one person, we got to win. — M T Anderson

Chess worked for a wholesale grocery firm. He had thought of being a history teacher, but his father had persuaded him that teaching was no way to support a wife and get on in the world. His father had helped him get this job but told him that once he got in he was not to expect any favors. He didn't. He left the house before it was light, during this first winter of our marriage, and came home after dark. He worked hard, not asking that the work he did fit in with any interests he might have had or have any purpose to it that he might have once honored. No purpose except to carry us both toward that life of lawnmowers and freezers which we believed we had no mind for. I might marvel at his submission, if I thought about it. His cheerful, you might say gallant, submission.
But then, I thought, it's what men do. — Alice Munro

We've got to teach history based not on what's in fashion, but what's important. — Ronald Reagan

I remember at the reception you said to me, 'I'm the daughter of a father who's been married five times. Mother killed herself. My sister killed herself. My brother has been in a mental institution. I'm twenty-three and divorced with two kids.' I said, 'Brooke, either you've got to open the window right now'--we were on the tenth floor--'either you've got to open the window right now and jump out, or say "I'm going to live," because you're right, it's the worst family history that anybody ever had, and either you jump out the window or you live. — Brooke Hayward

I'm truly worried about the country's direction. I can tell you this categorically, we've got the weakest president and the weakest governor in the history of my 50 years of public service. — Fritz Hollings

Yakov, if one becomes Hitler, just one - my God, you know what we've got!'
'No,' Liebermann said. 'No, I've been thinking about this for weeks. I say in my talks it takes two things to make it happen again, a new Hitler and social conditions like in the thirties. But that's not true. It takes three things: the Hitler, the conditions ... and the people to follow the Hitler.'
'And don't you think he'd find them?'
'No, not enough of them. I really think people are better and smarter now, not so much thinking their leaders are God. The television makes a big difference. And history, knowing ... Some he'd find, yes; but no more, I think- I hope- than the pretend Hitlers we have now ... — Ira Levin

It is my fault, and the fault of everyone of my generation. I wonder what the future generations will say about us. My grandparents suffered through the Depression, World War II, then came home to build the greatest middle class in human history. Lord knows they weren't perfect, but they sure came closest to the American dream. Then my parents' generation came along and f***ed it all up - the baby boomers, the "me" generation. And then you got us. Yeah, we stopped the Zombie menace, but we're the ones who let it become a menace in the first place. At least we're cleaning up our own mess, and maybe that's the best epitaph to hope for. 'Generation Z, they cleaned up their own mess. — Max Brooks

We have got some very big problems confronting us and let us not make any mistake about it, human history in the future is fraught with tragedy ... It's only through people making a stand against that tragedy and being doggedly optimistic that we are going to win through. If you look at the plight of the human race it could well tip you into despair, so you have to be very strong. — Robert James Brown

We are dealing with the best-educated generation in history. But they've got a brain dressed up with nowhere to go. — Timothy Leary

There's a peculiar dichotomy in the nature of almost anyone who calls himself a historian. Such scholars all piously assure us that they're telling us the real truth about what really happened, but if you turn any competent historian over and look at his damp underside, you'll find a storyteller, and you can believe me when I tell you that no storyteller's ever going to tell a story without a few embellishments. Add to that the fact that we've all got assorted political and theological preconceptions that are going to color what we write, and you'll begin to realize that no history of any event is entirely reliable ... — David Eddings

I think our government has gotten so far off track that it's high time something like this happened. All of these partisan politicians. You can see where they've gotten us. They cultivated this cancer, fought senselessly over how they should treat it, and now they're shocked to find that it's malignant and spreading? I'll tell you how we need to treat it. We need to oust the sons-a-bitches and bring the control back to the people. We're going to have to start this whole country up from scratch, using the Constitution, of course. We need to stick a cork in all of these special interests and get back to doing what's best for us. We've got this moment in history to set things right. Does that make sense to you guys? — Nicholas Antinozzi

How much do you know about the Heartland War?'
Connor shrugs. 'It was the last chapter in our history textbook, but we had state testing, so we never got to it. — Neal Shusterman

The problem, of course, is that at any given historical moment, prevailing views about the right changes to make in how we care for our bodies can be bullying and shaming. There is a lot of widespread guilt about diet, exercise, sex, and treatments. How insistent all the advice is! Have sex a lot, don't have any sex; eat heartily, eat with restraint; hold your body in stillness, move it and have it moved; bind your ample body tightly, wear soft clothes but have no fat. Not only are the various instructions different; they are directly at odds with each other. Yet, despite our historical track record on these matters, we are today generally confident that we know best- that science and other experts have now got it right, after a long history of nonsense. — Jennifer Michael Hecht

There were many deficits in our swamp education, but Grandpa Sawtooth, to his credit, taught us the names of whole townships that had been forgotten underwater. Black pioneers, Creek Indians, moonshiners, women, 'disappeared' boy soldiers who deserted their army camps. From Grandpa we learned how to peer beneath the sea-glare of the 'official, historical' Florida records we found in books. "Prejudice," as defined by Sawtooth Bigtree, was a kind of prehistoric arithmetic
a "damn, fool math"
in which some people counted and others did not. It meant white names on white headstones in the big cemetery in Cypress Point, and black and brown bodies buried in swamp water.
At ten, I couldn't articulate much but I got the message: to be a true historian, you had to mourn amply and well. — Karen Russell

It's so important for people to pay attention to history and learn from it, because it's the only thing we've got that's going to help us figure out where we are going. Especially the way things are manipulated in the press today. You have to sort through so much stuff to figure out what is real and what is not. It gets harder every day. — Joe Perry

This is what makes me crazy in this family, Dad. I don't care that you hit us. I really don't. That's over and there's nothing any of us can do about it. But I can't stand it when I state a simple fact about this family's history and I'm told by you or Mom that it didn't happen. But you've got to know, Dad, and I'm saying this as a son who loves you, that you were a shit to your kids. Not all the time. Not every day. Not every month. But we never knew what would set you off. We never knew when your temper would explode and we'd have the strongest shrimper on the river knocking us around the house. So we learned to be afraid without making a sound. And Mom was a loyal wife to you, Dad. She would never let us tell a soul that you were hitting us. Most of the time, she was like you and would simply tell us it didn't happen the way we remembered it. — Pat Conroy

Some day the load we're carrying with us may help someone. But even when we had the books on hand, a long time ago, we didn't use what we got out of them. We went right on insulting the dead. We went right on spitting in the graves of all the poor ones who died before us. We're going to meet a lot of lonely people in the next week and the next month and the next year. And when they ask us what we're doing, you can say, 'We're remembering'. That's where we'll win out in the long run. And some day we'll remember so much that we'll build the biggest goddamn steam-shovel in history and dig the biggest grave of all time and shove war in and cover it up. Come on now, we're going to go build a mirror-factory first and put out nothing but mirrors for the next year and take a long look in them. — Ray Bradbury

History is important. More than any other topic, it is about us. Whether one deems our present society wondrous or awful or both, history reveals how we got to this point. — James W. Loewen

Quentin [Taranino] will say, "We've got it, but we're gonna do it one more time. Why?" And then, the entire cast and crew chimes in and says, "Because we love making movies!" He is a person who celebrates this form of expression, and it is evident in his movies, his conversations, his extensive knowledge about the history of what we do, and the actors and crew that he assembles. — Walton Goggins

I would put our legislative and foreign policy accomplishments in our first two years against any president - with the possible exceptions of Johnson, FDR, and Lincoln - just in terms of what we've gotten done in modern history. But, you know, but when it comes to the economy, we've got a lot more work to do. And we're gonna keep on at it. — Barack Obama

I've got a few ideas," (Amy) admitted. "But I don't know where we're going in the long term. I mean - have you ever thought about what this ultimate treasure could be?"
"Something cool." (Dan)
"Oh, that's real helpful. I mean, what could make somebody the most powerful Cahill in history? And why thirty-nine clues?"
Dan shrugged. "Thirty-nine is a sweet number. It's thirteen times three. It's also the sum of five prime numbers in a row - 3,5,7,11,13. And if you add the first three powers of three, 3 to the first, 3 to the second, and s to the third, you get thirty-nine."
Amy stared at him. "How did you know that?"
"What do you mean? It's obvious. — Rick Riordan

When we started out we got a lot of positive press around the single 'Step Into My World', and a lot of Radio play. The single did really well, so we were in the spotlight straight away. I obviously had my history with Ride, but I didn't want to talk about that, so all the interviews centred around how I'd had these auditions and found the band members that way. I think people felt like that was not 'for real' enough or something. — Andy Bell

I come back to the same thing: We've got the greatest pipeline in the company's history in the next 12 months, and we've had the most amazing financial results possible over the last five years, and we're predicting being back at double-digit revenue growth in fiscal year '06. — Steve Ballmer

There's no doubt that when it comes to our treatment of Native Americans as well as other persons of color in this country, we've got some very sad and difficult things to account for. I personally would want to see our tragic history, or the tragic elements of our history, acknowledged. I consistently believe that when it comes to whether it's Native Americans or African-American issues or reparations, the most important thing for the U.S. government to do is not just offer words, but offer deeds. — Barack Obama

My experience came before most of you were born. My school was a state school in Leeds and the headmaster usually sent students to Leeds University but he didn't normally send them to Oxford or Cambridge. But the headmaster happened to have been to Cambridge and decided to try and push some of us towards Oxford and Cambridge. So, half a dozen of us tried - not all of us in history - and we all eventually got in. So, to that extent, it [The History Boys] comes out of my own experience. — Alan Bennett

We know people by their stories: their history, their habits, their secrets, their triumphs and failures. We know them by what they do. We want to know mountains too, but they've got no story. So we do the next best thing. We throw ourselves onto them and make the stories happen. — Bruce Barcott

I like ethics." The question of morality, how and why do people behave in certain ways. "And the principle of knowledge." I continue, "I've read this one." I show him On Certainty (book) by Ludwig Wittgenstein wrapped in my hand.
"An intelligent one, that is, though, modern mind rarely appreciates such kind of writing. Not any more. I studied philosophy myself, and you know what I think? Every branch of knowledge needs philosophy for it helps to organise the flow of ideas and articulate meanings.
I could not agree more to that. "Do you think it will be deserted one day?"
"Probably. Nobody will bother about it any more, just like history. What is the only thing people become more interested in nowadays?" he asks. "Making money." His thumb rubs repeatedly over the tip of the index finger. "Philosophy and history are considered as eccentric. They don't usually offer people high income, and that's the inexorable reality. We've got to deal with it anyhow. — Aishah Madadiy

History is made of empires, and the United States was by far and away the greatest, richest, and fairest empire that had ever dominated the earth. Inevitably, it would fall. Empires always did. But we were lucky, you said. We got to participate in the most fascinating social experiment ever attempted. — Lionel Shriver

We've got to map all of our ancient history before it's gone because, let's face it, if we don't have a common heritage to share, something to get excited about, then what are we living for? — Sarah Parcak

Son, you can't go around painting yourself black, you hear?"
"Why not, Papa?"
"Because they'll take you away."
"Why?"
"Because you shouldn't want to be like black people or Jewish people or anyone who is ... not us."
"Who are Jewish people?"
"You know my oldest customer, Mr. Kaufmann? Where we bought your shoes?"
"Yes."
"Well, he's Jewish."
"I didn't know that. Do you have to pay to be Jewish? Do you need a license?"
...
" ... you've got beautiful blond hair and big safe blue eyes. You should be happy with that; is that clear? — Markus Zusak

Social movements throughout history take place in people's minds. If we got 5,000 Americans who were talking about climate change to their neighbors and to their coworkers, and talking about this pledge, that would change the political and social landscape so much more than if 5,000 people got arrested for protesting a pipeline. — Margaret D. Klein

No, she did not have a history of twins, and we had discussed all of this before she got pregnant. What if all three, what if two eggs, what if one - you discuss every scenario. — Cheryl Tiegs

So here we are in a country with more wheat and corn and more money in the bank, more cotton, more everything in the world-there's not a product that you can name that we haven't got more of than any other country ever had on the face of the earth-and yet we've got people starving. We'll hold the distinction of being the only nation in the history of the world that ever went to the poor house in an automobile. — Will Rogers

The rules of syntax and intonation and words matured over time into the system we have today because they were progressively refined by use and the forge of survival and reproduction - not because the brain got big and complicated for some other reason, and all of a sudden we discovered we could now manipulate symbols as well. — Christine Kenneally

We campaigned across the South ... without a single catcall or boo. It was not until we got north to New York that we began to hear this from Koch, President Reagan, and then Mrs. Ferraro ... Some people are making hysteria while I'm making history. — Jesse Jackson

We were kids without fathers ... so we found our fathers on wax and on the streets and in history. We got to pick and choose the ancestors who would inspire the world we were going to make for ourselves. - Jay-Z — Austin Kleon

When I read Thirteen Days I was moved by it. It was just a great time for the world, in terms of looking back in history and seeing how we got ourselves into trouble and how we got ourselves out of trouble. — Kevin Costner

I confidently predict the collapse of capitalism and the beginning of history. Something will go wrong in the machinery that converts money into money, the banking system will collapse totally, and we will be left having to barter to stay alive. Those who can dig in their garden will have a better chance than the rest. I'll be all right; I've got a few veg. — Margaret Drabble

Our great history has been that people came to Michigan because you didn't have to have a college degree to get a good-paying job. Consequently, we have got a larger number of our population that right now are facing outsourcing, et cetera, without higher or advanced degrees. — Jennifer Granholm

Once upon a time, there was a civilization in the eastern side of the world. It was one of the most advanced civilizations on the planet that existed during that time.
This civilization was the glorious Indus valley civilization. No, I am not talking about India. I am talking about the land of greatness that got lost in time. Today, in the same geographical location of that great civilization, we have a piece of earth, which is known as "India". But do not mistake it to be the same glorious land that existed thousands of years ago, along with other magnificent civilizations, such as the Greeks, the Mayans, the Egyptians, the Babylonians etc. — Abhijit Naskar

It doesn't do to rely on those in charge completely. That's one thing the Yanks always got right. You've done a bit of history in school, haven't you? Well, now. Imagine if the National Guard had surrendered their arms, and the Germans had invaded after all. We'd have been fighting with broom handles and axes like hairy medievals while they ran over us with tanks. Your — Sarah Hall

Not that anybody cares two pins about history in these days.We've got rid of history; history is all my eye. But I've got to tell you the facts. — Carter Dickson

We were to remember that we were beautiful, intelligent, capable, kings and queens, in possession of a history, in possession of a culture, in possession of ourselves, and yet the more she filled the room with this effortful light, the clearer the sense I got of the shape and proportions of the huge shadow that must, after all, hang over us. One — Zadie Smith

If we got into a situation where people start burning our records, then bring it on. That's the whole point. The gloaming has begun. We're in the darkness. This has happened before. Go read some history. — Thom Yorke

We're always talking about following your passion. But we're all part of the flow of history ... you've got to put something back into the flow of history that's going to help your community ... People will say, this person didn't just have a passion, he cared about making something that other people could benefit from. — Steve Jobs

When social critics deplore the materialism of our time and its preoccupation with money, fame, and superficial values, they overlook that the driving force behind the changes we have seen
one of the greatest periods of change in history
has been thought. It wasn't big bucks or social status that drove this change. It was, and is, the force of the play of the mind. As materialistic as we may be, playful thinking got us here. — Edward M. Hallowell

Why do I need TV when I have forty-eight apartment windows to watch across the vacant lot, and a sliver of Lake Erie? I've seen history out this window. So much. I was four when we moved here in 1919. The fruit-sellers' carts and coal wagons were pulled down the street by horses back then. I used to stand just here and watch the coal brought up by the handsome lad from Groza, the village my parents were born in. Gibb Street was mainly Rumanians back then. It was "Adio" - "Good-bye"- in all the shops when you left. Then the Rumanians started leaving. They weren't the first, or the last. This has always been a working-class neighborhood. It's like a cheap hotel - you stay until you've got enough money to leave. — Paul Fleischman

It was the world of Southern, rural, black growing up, of folks sitting on porches day and night, of folks calling your mama, 'cause you walked by and didn't speak, and of the switch waiting when you got home so that you could be taught some manners. It was a world of single black older women schoolteachers, dedicated, tough; they had taught your mama, her sisters, and her friends. They knew your people in ways that you never would and shared their insight, keeping us in touch with generations. It was a world where we had a history. — Bell Hooks

From a reality perspective, I'm sure part of that is true, but this is the largest blackout in U.S. history. If that is not a signal that we have got a problem that needs to be fixed, I don't know what is. — Jennifer Granholm

It is through history that we learn who we are and how we got that way, why and how we changed, why the good sometimes prevailed and sometimes did not. — Stephen Ambrose

We got 16,000 wonderful vehicles. We got all the steel that we make our tanks out of. Of course, we couldn't have done without Western aid. — Georgy Zhukov

There was a grumpy librarian in the library. I could tell that he was the librarian because he seemed to be made of books. I told him that we needed information, and he got us some butterfly nets and sent us up to the top floor of the library.

I wondered why we were carrying nets. Valentine didn't know.

The book I wanted was pretty obvious. It was called A History of Everything.

Finding it was easy. Catching it, however, was not. The moment I reached for it, the whole shelfful of books took off into the air, fluttering like pigeons, and suddenly I knew what the butterfly nets were for.

I waved the net about and eventually I caught A History of Everything. As soon as I'd got it, all the rest of the books flapped back to their shelf, all except one, a little red-covered book, which fluttered over my head happily. — Neil Gaiman

We've got to know our history. We have to be able to bring our children to a place that they can be proud of. — Marla Gibbs

The fact was, as a story - even leaving out the supernatural, especially leaving out the supernatural, taking it all as metaphor, I mean - the Bible made perfect sense to me from the very beginning. I saw a God whose nature was creative love. He made man in his own image for the purpose of forming new and free relationships with him. But in his freedom, man turned away from that relationship to consult his own wisdom and desires. The knowledge of good and evil was not some top-secret catalogue of nice and naughty acts that popped into Eve's mind when a talking snake got her to eat the magic fruit. The knowledge was built into the action of disobedience itself: it's what she learned when she overruled the moral law God had placed within her. There was no going back from that. The original sin poisoned all history. History's murders, rapes, wars, oppressions, and injustices are now the inescapable plot of the story we're in. The — Andrew Klavan

Hip hop's got 30 years of history and we wanted to show that. A lot of us grew up with it. — Axel Alonso

Some of the more smug cyclists live in eternal hope that humanity will somehow realize the error of its ways and reject the automobile altogether ... This is not going to happen ... never in the history of the world has humanity forfeited an invention that makes our lives profoundly easier, as the car does. Nobody ever said, "This newsprint is making my fingers filthy. I'm going back to smoke signals." TV was supposed to rot your brain and ruin your eyes, but instead of going away it only got bigger and flatter, and we now have like four hundred channels instead of three. And airplanes are still the world's preferred mode of very-long-distance travel, even though terrorists still try to fly them into buildings and we now have to be dismantled into our component atoms, sifted through, and reassembled in order to board them. So if we have yet to jettison these abominations, why would people give up their cars either? — BikeSnobNYC

When I started giving talks about women's history, one of the things that bothered me was the tendency to say, 'Well, everybody was totally oppressed and suddenly in 1964 we rose up, got our freedom, and here we are.' It dismisses the women who fought for rights for several hundred years of our history up to that point. — Gail Collins

I'd love to say something heroic. I'd love to say we made history. But basically it was a bunch of guys parked around the Bay there, and somebody grabbed a board and went surfing, and it looked so good the rest of us guys said, 'Hey, we got to get in on this.' — Greg Noll

Home is where I am. Sadly, I don't need a history to be able to exist somewhere. When I was still very young, my father told me: 'Look, we will always have to move, again and again.' I thought that was marvelous! That's how I got used to thinking that life meant starting from scratch, over and over again. — Sophie Hunger

He said the reason we studied history was to find out why things were the way they were, how we got here. He said you could do anything you wanted to people who didn't know their history. That was the way a totalitarian system worked. — Janet Fitch

A Grand Design we couldn't see because we were part of it. A Grand Design we only got occasional, fleeting glimpses of. A Grand Design involving the entire course of history and all of time and space that, for some unfathomable reason, chose to work out its designs with cats and croquet mallets and penwipers, to say nothing of the dog. And a hideous piece of Victorian artwork. And us. — Connie Willis

Pick something you aren't just able to do; instead, pick something you feel like you were made to do and then do lots of that. You weren't just an incredible idea that God never got around to making. The next step happened for the world when God dropped you on the planet ... God decided to have us intersect history, not at just any time, but at this time. He made us to be good at a few things and bad at a couple of others. He made us to love some things and not like others. Most of all, He made us to dream ... We're part of God's much bigger plan for the whole world. Just like God's Son arrived here, so did you. And after Jesus arrived, God whispered to all of humanity ... It's your move. — Bob Goff

You know better than I," he said, "that all courts-martial are farces and that you're really paying for the crimes of
other people, because this time we're going to win the war at any price. Wouldn't you have done the same in my place?"
General Moncada got up to clean his thick horn-rimmed glasses on his shirttail. "Probably," he said. "But what
worries me is not your shooting me, because after all, for people like us it's a natural death." He laid his glasses on
the bed and took off his watch and chain. "What worries me," he went on "is that out of so much and thinking about them so much, you've ended up as bad as they are. And no ideal in life is worth that much baseness." He took off his wedding ring and the medal of the Virgin of Help and put them alongside his glasses and watch.
"At this rate," he concluded, "you'll not only be the most despotic and bloody dictator in our history, but you'll shoot
my dear friend Ursula in an attempt to pacify your conscience. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

We have to look at our history and realize that if they pretend to be our friend it's because they've got something up their sleeve, — Christine O'Donnell

We've got the most prosperous culture in human history and we've also got the biggest spiritual hole in human history. People are saying, "I can't fill the hole with money. I can't fill it with alcohol, or drugs, or sex, so what do I need to fill it with?" — Mark Victor Hansen

History overflows time. Love overflows the allowance of the world. All the vessels overflow, and no end or limit stays put. Every shakable thing has got to be shaken. In a sense, nothing that was ever lost in Port William ever has been replaced. In another sense, nothing is ever lost, and we are compacted together forever, even by our failures, our regrets, and our longings. — Wendell Berry

At one stage in the history of English, the past tenses of verbs were marked by a regular vowel change process; instead of "help/helped," we had "help/holp." Over time, -ed became the preferred way to mark the past tense, and eventually the past tense of most verbs was formed by adding -ed. But the old pattern was preserved in verbs like "eat/ate," "give/gave," "take/ took," "get/got" - verbs that are used very often, and so are more entrenched as a linguistic habit (the very frequently used "was/ were" is a holdover from an even older pattern). They became irregular because the world changed around them. — Arika Okrent

All civilization comes through literature now, especially in our country. A Greek got his civilization by talking and looking, and in some measure a Parisian may still do it. But we, who live remote from history and monuments, we must read or we must barbarise. — William Dean Howells

The dominant male is history. Could you see a male Lady Gaga? The closest we've got is Justin Bieber, who'd be locked up if he tried the stuff Gaga gets away with. Women are the only rock stars now. Adele is brutally honest. I want to be like her. — Tom Odell