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Historical literature7 quotes
The history of the world is none other than the progress of the consciousness of freedom. — Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel · 1832Men wiser and more learned than I have discerned in history a plot, a rhythm, a predetermined pattern. These harmonies are concealed from me. I can see only one emergency following upon another as wave follows upon wave. — H.A.L. Fisher · 1935America was discovered accidentally by a great seaman who was looking for something else; when discovered it was not wanted; and most of the exploration for the next fifty years was done in the hope of getting through or around it. America was named after a man who discovered no part of the New World. History is like that, very chancy. — Samuel Eliot Morison · 1965History...is, indeed, little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind. — Edward Gibbon · 1776History is the essence of innumerable Biographies. — Thomas Carlyle · 1830Human blunders, however, usually, do more to shape history than human wickedness. — A.J.P. Taylor · 1961All 7 quotes →Philosophical literature2 quotes
The history of the world is none other than the progress of the consciousness of freedom. — Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel · 1832There is no history of mankind, there is only an indefinite number of histories of all kinds of aspects of human life. And one of these is the history of political power. This is elevated into the history of the world. — Karl Popper · 1945Biography1 quote
The history of the Victorian Age will never be written: we know too much about it. For ignorance is the first requisite of the historian-ignorance, which simplifies and clarifies, which selects and omits, with a placid perfection unattainable by the highest art. — Lytton Strachey · 1918Drama1 quote
In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock. — Harry Lime · 1949Drama (film)1 quote
In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock. — Harry Lime · 1949Film noir1 quote
In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock. — Harry Lime · 1949Political literature1 quote
There is no history of mankind, there is only an indefinite number of histories of all kinds of aspects of human life. And one of these is the history of political power. This is elevated into the history of the world. — Karl Popper · 1945