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Post by Tamrin on Mar 19, 2011 9:58:11 GMT 10
How Far back must we go to discover the beginning of trouble?
Everyone becomes a part of history whether they like it or not and whether they know it or not
Philip Roth (Born this day 1933)
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Post by Tamrin on May 9, 2011 7:03:55 GMT 10
We have need of history in its entirety, not to fall back into it, but to see if we can escape from it
José Ortega y Gasset (Born this day 1883)
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Post by Tamrin on Aug 3, 2011 7:13:54 GMT 10
History, which interprets the past to understand the present and confront the future is the least rewarding discipline for a dying species
P.D. James (Born this day 1920)
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Post by Tamrin on Aug 17, 2011 7:11:54 GMT 10
Since historical reconstruction is a rational process, only justified and indeed possible if it involves the human reason, what we call history is the mess we call life reduced to some order. pattern and possibly purpose
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In history, as elsewhere, fools rush in, and the angels may perhaps be forgiven if rather than tread in those treacherous paths they tread upon the fools instead
Geoffrey Elton (Born this day 1921)
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Post by Tamrin on Dec 6, 2011 14:26:49 GMT 10
Why do men study ancient history, acquire a knowledge of dead lang- uges and decipher illegible inscriptions? What gives life to the study of antiquity? What compels men, in the midst of these busy times, to sacrifice their leisure to studies apparently so unattractive and useless, if not the conviction, that in order to obey the Delphic commandment — in order to know what Man is, we ought to know what Man has been?
Max Müller (Born this day 1823)
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Post by Smithee on Oct 21, 2012 9:57:52 GMT 10
Biographical history, as taught in our public schools, is still largely a history of bone- heads: ridiculous kings and queens, paranoid political leaders, compulsive voyagers, ignorant generals — the flotsam and jetsam of historical currents. The men who radically altered history, the great scientists and mathematicians, are seldom mentioned, if at all Martin Gardner [/b] (Born this day 1914)[/quote]
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Post by Tamrin on Jan 17, 2013 5:44:29 GMT 10
All true histories contain instruction; though, in some, the treasure may be hard to find, and when found, so trivial in quantity, that the dry, shrivelled kernel scarcely compensates for the trouble of cracking the nut
Anne Brontë (Born this day 1820)
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Post by Tamrin on Feb 16, 2013 6:30:52 GMT 10
The very concept of history implies the scholar and the reader. Without a generation of civilized people to study history, to preserve its records, to absorb its lessons and relate them to its own problems, history, too, would lose its meaning
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Not only the studying and writing of history but also the honoring of it both represent affirmations of a certain defiant faith — a desperate, unreasoning faith, if you will — but faith nevertheless in the endurance of this threatened world — faith in the total essentiality of historical continuity
George Frost Kennan (Born this day 1904)
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Post by Tamrin on Jun 18, 2013 6:45:22 GMT 10
If a person would understand either the Odyssey or any other ancient work, he must never look at the dead without seeing the living in them, nor at the living without thinking of the dead. We are too fond of seeing the ancients as one thing and the moderns as another
Samuel Butler (Died this day 1902)
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