Top 100 History Of Ideas Quotes
#1. Human history in essence is the history of ideas.
H.G.Wells
#2. The genuine history of mankind is the history of ideas. It is
ideas that distinguish man from all other beings. Ideas
engender social institutions, political changes, technologi-
cal methods of production, and all that is called economic
conditions.
Ludwig Von Mises
#3. Democracy has nothing to do with freedom. Democracy is a soft variant of communism, and rarely in the history of ideas has it been taken for anything else.
Hans-Hermann Hoppe
#5. I try to keep this in mind when tied in to a rope 75 feet up in a tree ... The history of ideas about our place in the universe has been a long series of let-downs for those who like to believe we are special.
Neil DeGrasse Tyson
#6. In many ways, a degree in the history of ideas is the ideal training for an aspiring writer.
Anne Fortier
#8. There is no mechanism of selection in the history of ideas akin to that of the natural selection of genetic mutations in evolution
John Gray
#9. I arrived from Harvard, where I had studied philosophy and the history of ideas, with a bias toward literature and formal thought.
Robert Darnton
#10. The history of ideas is the history of the grudges of solitary men.
Emile M. Cioran
#11. When I was a graduate student, the leading spirits at Harvard were interested in the history of ideas.
M.H. Abrams
#12. ANYONE who studies the history of ideas should notice how much more often people on the political left, more so than others, denigrate and demonize those who disagree with them - instead of answering their arguments.
Thomas Sowell
#13. We find in the history of ideas mutations which do not seem to correspond to any obvious need, and at first sight appear as mere playful whimsies such as Apollonius' work on conic sections, or the non-Euclidean geometries, whose practical value became apparent only later.
Arthur Koestler
#14. This is the worst idea in the history of ideas, yet I can't stop myself from nodding.
Denise Grover Swank
#15. The history of ideas is littered with the corpses of those who have tried to define culture.
Giles Foden
#16. Human history is, in essence, a history of ideas.
H.G.Wells
#17. What borders on the criminal is the poor teaching and neglect of those subjects that deal with the history of ideas and ideals, a knowledge of which is essential to all youth who would assume their place in society as thinking, feeling human beings.
John Mortimer Smith
#18. I'm interested in the history of ideas and how these ideas take on flesh and influence culture, and the church.
Kevin Vanhoozer
#19. Drinking wine and wearing trousers were nothing compared to reading the history of ideas.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
#20. When 99% of people doubt your idea, you're either gravely wrong or about to make history.
Scott Belsky
#21. How many ideas have there been in the history of man which were unthinkable ten years before they appeared?
Fyodor Dostoevsky
#22. What is peculiar to our own age is the abandonment of the idea that history could be told truthfully.
George Orwell
#23. There is much to learn about what could happen in the gardens of the future, should designers wish to learn about the past.
Tom Turner
#24. At every period of history, people have believed things that were just ridiculous, and believed them so strongly that you risked ostracism or even violence by saying otherwise. If our own time were any different, that would be remarkable. As far as I can tell it isn't.
Paul Graham
#25. The history of any nation is not only a succession of events, but also a chain of ideas.
Pyotr Chaadayev
#26. The question I am most often asked is how do I find my ideas? The answer is I don't. Ideas find me. A character in history will suddenly step right out of the past and demand a book. Generally, people don't bother to speak to me unless there's a good chance that I'll take them on.
Jean Fritz
#27. Darwinism is under official protection throughout the world. No other ideology in history, no other idea, has ever been kept under such strict official protection. To make any kind of statement criticizing Darwinism causes an official reaction.
Harun Yahya
#28. I am intrigued by inanimate objects. They're a piece of history, someone's statement and ideas of life.
Mike Mills
#29. We CREATORS are builders. We are dedicated to the idea of building a beautiful world so different and so superior to the present one that we CREATORS of this generation will go down in history as the revolutionaries who ushered in the Golden Age of Mankind.
Ben Klassen
#30. History is full of people who went to prison or were burned at the stake for proclaiming their ideas. Society has always defended itself.
Naguib Mahfouz
#31. The idea that we have the right to inflict suffering and death on other sentient beings for the trivial reasons of palate pleasure and fashion is, without doubt, one of the most arrogant and morally repugnant notions in the history of human thought.
Gary L. Francione
#32. The hiring of Phil Messina, the production designer, was a big decision. He's so gifted, and his ideas were always so smart and rooted in American history and architecture. Nothing feels like it's not us, or couldn't be us, and I think that's very important.
Nina Jacobson
#33. Histories of morality are rarely written in order to inform the reader.
John Gray
#34. It isn't that you subordinate your ideas to the force of the facts in autobiography but that you construct a sequence of stories to bind up the facts with a persuasive hypothesis that unravels your history's meaning.
Philip Roth
#35. Clinging uncritically to traditional ideas and beliefs often serves to obscure or deny real facts of our life history.
Alice Miller
#36. I really love travelling to places where I get to learn something new about a new group of people or a new place. Learn some history, contemplate some business ideas, and sort of get off the beaten track a little bit.
Leila Janah
#37. Along with the idea of romantic love, she was introduced to another
physical beauty. Probably the most destructive ideas in the history of human thought. Both originated in envy, thrived in insecurity, and ended in disillusion.
Toni Morrison
#38. old books -- little tombstones of ideas and history
Amy Tan
#39. In the history of medicine, it is not always the great scientist or the learned doctor who goes forward to discover new fields, new avenues, new ideas.
Elizabeth Kenny
#40. Once again a new world view is arising ... This idea is the culmination of all human history. It holds the promise of fulfilling the great aspirations of the past and heralds the advent of the next phase of our evolution. It is the idea of conscious evolution.
Barbara Marx Hubbard
#41. Whatever conclusions we reach about the reality of God, the history of this idea must tell us something important about the human mind and the nature of our aspiration.
Karen Armstrong
#42. There is this idea of history as something you make, as a meaningful narrative with a beginning and an end, the end being a utopia of happiness that we'll reach through socialism or free trade or democracy, and then it will all be wonderful.
Pankaj Mishra
#43. Each decade absolutizes its own fashions of thought and action without the least pause and consideration of the fact that a decade later those very fashions and ideas will be buried in the dustbin of history as one turns to a new decade.
Seyyed Hossein Nasr
#44. It is inadmissible that systems of ideas like religions, which have held so considerable a place in history, and to which, in all times, men have come to receive the energy which they must have to live, should be made up of a tissue of illusions.
Emile Durkheim
#45. Those of us who read carried around with us like martyrs a secret knowledge, a secret joy, and a secret hope: There is a life worth living where history is still taking place; there are ideas worth dying for, and circumstances where courage is still prized.
Annie Dillard
#46. We have such a great depth of human history in all of the arts, whether it's opera or mathematics or painting or classical music or jazz. There's so many things to study, new books to read, and certainly always ways to transform old ideas and to come up with new ones.
Patti Smith
#47. It was special with me being from Memphis and knowing the history of the venue, knowing all of the artists who performed in the Orpheum before me. Even having the idea to approach it was ambitious on my part, but I thought they would turn me down at first.
Yo Gotti
#48. Europe and Africa share proximity and history, ideas and ideals, trade and technology. You are tied together by the ebb and flow of people. Migration presents policy challenges - but also represents an opportunity to enhance human development, promote decent work, and strengthen collaboration.
Ban Ki-moon
#49. We Americans are lucky to live in a country with a history full of noble ideas, great leaders, and awe-inspiring accomplishments. Sadly, many of our elites want no part of it.
Michael Barone
#50. A critical knowledge of the evolution of the idea of property would embody, in some respects, the most remarkable portion of the mental history of mankind.
Lewis Henry Morgan
#51. The history of reform is always identical; it is the comparison of the idea with the fact. Our modes of living are not agreeable to our imagination. We suspect they are unworthy. We arraign our daily employments.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#52. Of course if no one had ever been exposed to dangerous ideas from scandalous women, Christianity itself would not have had its unique beginning nor its glorious history, but whatever.
Nadia Bolz-Weber
#53. Books won't stay banned. They won't burn. Ideas won't go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas. The source of better ideas is wisdom. The surest path to wisdom is a liberal education.
Alfred Whitney Griswold
#54. Jazz is an idea that is more powerful than the details of its history.
Pat Metheny
#55. But don't forget my ideas are only what's been written down in history by the great people of the world who've gone before. All I've done is condense the wisdom of the world into an attitude for athletics. Athletics aren't just running, it's a way of life
Percy Cerutty
#56. Individuals who are really inspirational are always what changes history. Gandhi had a bunch of good ideas, and he led a non - violent revolution that transformed India.
Daniel Pinchbeck
#57. British garden history is best understood as a small incident in the histories of ideas, design and technology.
Tom Turner
#58. Men of genius supply the substance of history, while the mass of men are but the critical filter, the limiting, slackening, passive force needed for the modification of ideas supplied by genius.
Henri Frederic Amiel
#59. Far from being the crown of human thought and religion as its supporters have claimed for several bloody millennia, [monotheism] is in fact a monstrous step backwards
a step that has been responsible for more human misery than any other idea in known history.
Isaac Bonewits
#60. I like the idea of a big caesura between the narratives, a space which readers can fill in with their own speculative history.
Jonathan Coe
#61. One of the best introductions to the history and ideas of Calvinism, packed with insight and wisdom.
Alister E. McGrath
#62. Physics advances by accepting absurdities. Its history is one of unbelievable ideas proving to be true.
Rivka Galchen
#63. Pain is beyond reason, an obliterating giant stupidity to which all your history of jokes and nuance and ideas and caresses is nothing, simply nothing.
Glen Duncan
#64. My process for determining which eras I'd write about was to just read history books that gave a really broad overview of Chinese history. And when I came across a historical figure or a historical incident that was especially interesting to me, ideas for characters and stories would surface.
Susan Barker
#65. And, if you'll investigate the history of science, my dear boy, I think you'll find that most of the really big ideas have come from intelligent playfulness. All the sober, thin-lipped concentration is really just a matter of tidying up around the fringes of the big ideas.
Kurt Vonnegut
#66. Every child in America should be acquainted with his own country. He should read books that furnish him with ideas that will be useful to him in life and practice. As soon as he opens his lips, he should rehearse the history of his own country.
Noah Webster
#67. The possibility of a scientific treatment of history means a wider experience, a greater maturity of practical reason, and finally a fuller realization of certain basic ideas regarding the nature of life and time.
Muhammad Iqbal
#68. And it has been the paleontologist- my own breed-who have been most responsible for letting ideas dominate reality: ... We paleontologist have said that the history of life supports that interpretation [gradual adaptive change], all the while knowing that it does not.
Niles Eldredge
#69. To read is to fly: it is to soar to a point of vantage which gives a view over wide terrains of history, human variety, ideas, shared experience and the fruits of many inquiries.
Alberto Manguel
#70. But perhaps the rest of us could have separate classes in science appreciation, the wonder of science, scientific ways of thinking, and the history of scientific ideas, rather than laboratory experience.
Richard Dawkins
#71. What we call National-Socialism is the poisonous perversion of ideas which have a long history in German intellectual life.
Thomas Mann
#72. It is not primarily ideas that have a history; it is societies. And then what often seem opposed ideas can in the end be seen as parts of a single social process.
Raymond Williams
#73. This book is the story of the birth, growth, and future of one of the most powerful and dangerous ideas in the history of science:
Siddhartha Mukherjee
#74. A library, to modify the famous metaphor of Socrates, should be the delivery room for the birth of ideas - a place where history comes to life.
Norman Cousins
#75. What is important is that Marx's theory of history is a vision of human beings in a state of alienation. Human beings cannot be free if they are subject to forces that determine their thoughts, their ideas, their very nature as human beings.
Anonymous
#76. The history of human growth is at the same time the history of every new idea heralding the approach of a brighter dawn, and the brighter dawn has always been considered illegal, outside of the law.
Emma Goldman
#77. And in the absence of facts, myth rushes in, the kudzu of history.
Stacy Schiff
#78. I don't want to be a slave to history or facts. As long as I'm getting a good cursory understanding of what it is and I'm not drifting too far away at certain points, then I can play with the idea and take it anywhere I want to.
Scott Walker
#79. I think of an intellectual as just being bookish, being interested in history books, utopian ideas, that kind of thing.
Richard Rorty
#80. American Education has a long history of infatuation with fads and ill-considered ideas. The current obsession with making our schools work like a business may be the worst of them, for it threatens to destroy public education. Who will Stand up to the tycoons and politicians and tell them so?
Diane Ravitch
#81. History marches to the drum of a clear idea.
W. H. Auden
#82. In all literary history there is no such figure as Dante, no such homogeneousness of life and works, such loyalty to ideas, such sublime irrecognition of the unessential.
James Russell Lowell
#83. The clarification of our political ideas insensibly changes into and becomes indistinguishable from the history of political ideas.
Leo Strauss
#84. Tolstoy is one of the greatest artists in history, but he finally became infused with the idea of the uselessness of art. He gave himself to his own kind of religion.
Gerald Stern
#85. You have to get past the idea that music has to be one thing. To be alive in America is to hear all kinds of music constantly: radio, records, churches, cats on the street, everywhere music. And with records, the whole history of music is open to everyone who wants to hear it.
Jerry Garcia
#86. The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling - their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability. Remember this: We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them.
Arundhati Roy
#87. There was even a recurrent idea in America about an education that would leave out history and the past, that should be a sort of equipment for aerial adventure, weighed down by none of the stowaways of inheritance or tradition.
F Scott Fitzgerald
#88. At times there seems to be a million ideas worth painting. However, there are days when it's a challenge to pull any idea together. On these days I go to my studio, leaf through an art history book, and tell myself that I am part of this great tradition.
James Dean
#89. Such ideas made him [Constable] a precursor of the essentially twentieth-century view that art and life are inseparable and there is no such thing as ideal subject-matter.
Neville Weston
#90. Why is history important? Without history, many people have no idea how many of today's half-baked ideas have been tried, again and again - and have repeatedly led to disaster. Most of these ideas are not new. They are just being recycled with re-treaded rhetoric.
Thomas Sowell
#91. I believe the example of the Zapatistas is a very relevant historical example. I would say it is one of the forms at the idea level, and through the work they have achieved, one of the most dignified historical examples that has happened in the history of the world.
Bocafloja
#92. At any given period in history the ideas of the common mind are found to antedate the facts. The facts of the twentieth century are approached with the ideas, feelings, prejudices of the tenth.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
#93. If you think about how broadcast mini-series approach historical events, there is a hagiography. There has been a soft, very glossy idea about history. And one of the things I like about Game of Thrones, for example, is just the grit and the authenticity.
John Landgraf
#94. One of the reasons we do history, in fact, is because it acts as a brake, a control, on our otherwise unbridled enthusiasm for our own ideas.
N. T. Wright
#95. Ideas are, in truth, forces. Infinite, too, is the power of personality. A union of the two always makes history.
Henry James
#96. Physically, gardens must have boundaries. Mentally, they can reach to the limits of the known universe. The ideas that bestow such vast extent upon gardens derive from sun, earth, art, water, history, civilization, family, anything.
Tom Turner
#97. Go to the source for ideas, go to the Metropolitan Museum, find your inspiration in nature, go to the Museum of Natural History, but never rely on something that someone else has done.
Van Day Truex
#98. If the attitude of many non-Catholic modern philosophers toward Catholic thought could be summarized in a single sentence, it would be: It has been tried, it has produced its definitive results, which have been found lacking, and now its time is past
Gregory B. Sadler
#99. When Moses was alive, these pyramids were a thousand years old. Here began the history of architecture. Here people learned to measure time by a calendar, to plot the stars by astronomy and chart the earth by geometry. And here they developed that most awesome of all ideas - the idea of eternity.
Walter Cronkite
#100. I came to realize that exaggerated concern about what others are doing can be foolish. It can paralyze effort, and stifle a good idea. One finds that in the history of science, almost every problem has been worked out by someone else. This should not discourage anyone from pursuing his own path.
Theodore Von Karman
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