Most Historical Quotes

#1. With time, many staged photographs turn back into historical evidence, albeit of an impure kind - like most historical evidence.

Susan Sontag

#2. I am a lazy, cynical, middle-aged guy who has long since come to the conclusion that most historical periods really sucked, for most people, most of the time.

Charles Stross

#3. The writing of history is largely a diversion. Most historical accounts distract attention from the secret influences behind great events.

Frank Herbert

#4. These," he said gravely, "are unpleasant facts; I know it. But then most historical facts are unpleasant.

Aldous Huxley

#5. 'Diversity' is a wonderfully seductive word. It stresses differences rather than commonalities. Diverse people worldwide are mostly engaged in hating each other - that is, when they are not killing each other. A 'diverse,' peaceful or stable society is against most historical precedent.

Richard Lamm

#6. Most people can't tell now who wrote what. I like that blurring of identities within the band. because it becomes a unified thing that can't be related to other forms of historical poetry.

Thurston Moore

#7. Today, in American imperialism, the commodity has reached its most grandiose historical manifestation.

C.L.R. James

#8. Most long-range forecasts of what is technically feasible in future time periods dramatically underestimate the power of future developments because they are based on what I call the "intuitive linear" view of history rather than the "historical exponential" view.

Ray Kurzweil

#9. Like an unfinished symphony, her story played on my mind for most of my life. It would rock to the tune of the passage of time, an adagio of high notes, low notes an illusive movements. Then when I least expected it, I happened upon the missing notes in the life of Charlotte Howe Taylor.

Sally Armstrong

#10. Most of [her ashes] fell into the river in a long gray curtain. But some was caught by the wind and blown upward toward the blue spring sky where it swirled a moment in the air, before dissolving into sunlight.

Kimberly Cutter

#11. Bauer's 'Criticism of the Gospel History' is worth a good dozen Lives of Jesus, because his work, as we are only now coming to recognise, after half a century, is the ablest and most complete collection of the difficulties of the Life of Jesus which is anywhere to be found.

Albert Schweitzer

#12. But it is a historical fact that the Jews, and no one else, gave the world the Bible. It is a historical fact that the Jews introduced to the pagan world the idea of a God who demanded righteousness......Even most of the books of the New Testament were written by Jews.

Harold S. Kushner

#13. Most people's historical perspective begins with the day of their birth.

Rush Limbaugh

#14. Margaret looked at the ring on her finger. "Gran gave me this before we boarded the ship. It's the most special thing in the world to me. I'll never take it off, Hanna. No matter how hungry I am.

Meredith Jaeger

#15. When he bowed his head to hide his grin, she stiffened. "This is most certainly not amusing."
He looked up, the humor still glittering in his eyes, and spoke one word. "James."
"Pardon me?"
"James Lamont. It's my name. You'll need it if you're to curse me properly.

Tamara Hughes

#16. For long, history was mainly political history, and historical narrative was confined to an account of the most important crises in political life, or to an account of wars and great generals.

Michael Rostovtzeff

#17. Once more, I am watching the most powerful men in the kingdom bring their power to bear on a woman who has done nothing worse than live to the beat of her own heart, see with her own eyes; but this is not their tempo nor their vision and they cannot tolerate any other.

Philippa Gregory

#18. Being that the *historical* Jesus was of pure Hebraic descent- lineage of Eber- He was not an Arab or of Arabic descent, therefore He was not dark skinned as most Israeli's are not."

~R. Alan Woods [2013]

R. Alan Woods

#19. When looked at from the woman's side of the bed-sheet, most tales take a turning.

Orna Ross

#20. Most actors are drawn towards historical tellings because it's one of the most simple forms of storytelling.

Ben Barnes

#21. I wondered what he would have thought if he'd known that I'd gleaned most of my information from reading historical romance novels.

Nicole Luiken

#22. 'Memory.' 'Race.' 'Murder.' That's what they say about me. I am an elegiac poet. I have some historical questions, and I'm grappling with ways to make sense of history; why it still haunts us in our most intimate relationships with each other, but also in our political decisions.

Natasha Trethewey

#23. I've played so many historical characters because most horrible dictators are short, fat, middle-aged men.

Bob Hoskins

#24. It's a historical phenomenon that in 250 years, a nation could move from a colony into the most prosperous nation of the world and the leader of the world. It is indeed an achievement, a tribute to the talent of the American nation, the American people and an optimal political and economic system.

Vladimir Putin

#25. The most advanced, creative and original thinking is always a product of historical context and the influences of previous geniuses, mentors, and collaborators on the mind of the originator.

Michael J. Gelb

#26. I have the most profound respect for the Department of Justice and the FTC. We in Europe are a younger and I would say junior institution to the historical antitrust experience of the US.

Mario Monti

#27. History is not a web woven with innocent hands. Among all the causes which degrade and demoralize men, power is the most constant and most active.

Abigail Adams

#28. He wondered at the atrocities human kind was capable of committing. The majority of those housed below were ill, mentally or physically, not witches. Most were poor victims
the outcasts of society; or the opposite, people so blessed, others coveted their lives.

Brynn Chapman

#29. Here's a news flash: scientists can be wrong. That's no big deal (unless the scientist is you), since research is self-correcting. Consequently, most errors by scientists become historical curiosities, with little long-term importance.

Seth Shostak

#30. Buddhism, I think, is probably facing the single most difficult transition from one historical epoch to another, which is really the transition to modernity.

Stephen Batchelor

#31. Like most little girls, I found the lure of grown-up accessories astonishing - lipstick, perfume, hats and gloves. When I write female characters in my historical novels, getting these details right is vital.

Sara Sheridan

#32. The works of the creative spirit last, they are essentially imperishable, while the world-stirring historical activities of even the most eminent men are circumscribed by time.

Bruno Walter

#33. I am afraid, my dear niece, that a 'mere woman' is something you most certainly are not.

Katlyn Charlesworth

#34. Library events scare me, as they provide refuge for local historians, fabulists, tellers of tall tales, historical reenactors, and even dream weavers. Not to mention the single most feared creature on the planet: the self-published poet

Joe Queenan

#35. Most people don't like to talk about violent historical death.

Sarah Vowell

#36. The dogma of woman's complete historical subjection to men must be rated as one of the most fantastic myths ever created by the human mind.

Mary Ritter Beard

#37. What people most need now is to apply their conversion skills to those things that are essential for their survival. They need to convert facts into logic, free will into purpose, conscience into decision. They need to convert historical experience into a design for a sane world.

Norman Cousins

#38. I have a fondness for historical fiction, something wondrous like 'Wolf Hall,' but I'll read most anything as long as the story grabs my mind or my heart, and preferably both. You would be hard pressed, however, to find science fiction on my shelves.

Sue Monk Kidd

#39. Most communities attempting to survive under irresistible pressure from a dominant culture develop a myth that allows them to believe they are somehow a special people. Chosen. Favored by the gods. Gypsies, Jews
plenty of historical precedents

Orson Scott Card

#40. Watergate got us to think of leaders as mere mortals. America began to think of itself in a very different way - I would say a salutary way - and Reagan was most important in shifting the grand dynamic thrust of the American historical process by ending that.

Rick Perlstein

#41. Let me have you in the most intimate of
ways, let me give you a part of myself that no other man may touch.
Make me yours forever.

Rachel L. Demeter

#42. As the British Constitution is the most subtle organism which has proceeded from progressive history, so the American Constitution is the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man.

William E. Gladstone

#43. I am a survivor. But I am not unique of the people that survived the great late war. We all have our stories to tell. But for most of us the hardened corners have soften with the passage of time.

Nancy B. Brewer

#44. There was a moment of tenderness between them, and for a moment he experienced the most rare, ridiculous emotion- hope.

Tessa Dare

#45. Most of my career has been spent with the RSC doing Shakespeare, and the thing you learn from Shakespeare is that his historical plays don't bear anything other than a basic resemblance to history.

Antony Sher

#46. There I was limited to what happened the same way I am with Riel. It doesn't feel like a great burden to have your story, to some degree, set. I am enjoying figuring out what I think is the most dramatic way of telling this set of historical facts.

Chester Brown

#47. Even if you're playing the most well-known repertoire under the sun, I still believe you have a responsibility as an artist to tell the audience why you're playing it, what are the key aspects to it, and then throw in a bit about its historical context.

Charles Hazlewood

#48. Most fourth graders can't say why Abraham Lincoln is an important historical figure? Wow. This is far more distressing than if the news had been that fourth graders were bad at reciting multiplication tables, because you can, in fact, Google that.

Susan Orlean

#49. The thing that most attracts me to historical fiction is taking the factual record as far as it is known, using that as scaffolding, and then letting imagination build the structure that fills in those things we can never find out for sure.

Geraldine Brooks

#50. 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

#51. It is historical continuity that maintains most assumptions,
not repeated assessment of their validity.

Edward De Bono

#52. Mathematics is one of the most basic
and most ancient
types of knowledge. Yet the details of its historical development remain obscure to all but a few specialists.

Ivor Grattan-Guinness

#53. I do believe that in every age there are people whose consciousness transcends their own time and that these people, whether fictional or historical, are those with whom we most closely identify and those about whom we most enjoy reading.

Erica Jong

#54. There is no self-knowledge but an historical one. No one knows what he himself is who does not know his fellow men, especially the most prominent one of the community, the master's master, the genius of the age.

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

#55. Most of the history is a divine work of fiction.

Kedar Joshi

#56. It is this third consequence that has been elaborated in greatest detail and has formed one of the most significant pillars of historical capitalism, institutional racism.

Immanuel Wallerstein

#57. If you look at landscape in historical terms, you realize that most of the time we have been on Earth as a species, what has fallen on our retina is landscape, not images of buildings and cars and street lights.

Bill Viola

#58. What about snipers?" I once asked someone. He said, "Oh, most of the snipers have automatic weapon. They arent very accurate.

P. J. O'Rourke

#59. But there will be no redemption for me. I will become the most unmerciful of murderers. I accept my fate.

Heather Day Gilbert

#60. Sometimes people do misguided things for the most honorable of reasons.

Tamara Hughes

#61. Most of my money remains in England, although my unworthy carcass may not under usual circumstances ...

Kellyn Roth

#62. You realise Group Captain that this might be the most important weather forecast in history?

Dwight D. Eisenhower

#63. In my experience there are only a handful of reasons for murder ... Jealousy, vengeance, greed, fear and pleasure ... Some killers enjoy the kill ... For them it is a great game, and for the most part they are the ones I hunt.

Amanda Quick

#64. Most architects work in studios largely divorced from academia, as if ideas, criticism and historical research were irrelevant.

David Chipperfield

#65. What's most explosive about historical fiction is to use the fictional elements to pressure the history to new insights.

Matthew Pearl

#66. You don't have to know people personally for them to be role models. Some of my most important role models were historical or literary figures that I only read about - never actually met.

John Wilson

#67. The mommy-porn genre currently sweeping the book industry and the Babylonian excess of most television shows probably fall within the historical norm in our culture's sleaze index and are not omens of the imminent collapse of civilization, though if I were not so busy, I might start building an ark.

Dean Koontz

#68. This was getting bloody ridiculous, he thought savagely. If she became any more adorable, endearing, or delectable, something was going to get broken.
Most likely his heart.

Lisa Kleypas

#69. Historical research to this day remains unorganized, and the historian is expected to make his own instruments or do without them; and so with wooden ploughs we continue to draw lonely furrows, most successfully when we strike sand.

Sir Lewis Bernstein Namier

#70. Let every lady in Camlochlin swoon over a charming smile. She had won the love of a man who shared his most intimate smiles for her alone

Paula Quinn

#71. I point out. It was the most foolish, jape-fisted bit of buffoonery I have ever seen, and I am impressed in spite of that.

Robin LaFevers

#72. I loved the idea of making history interesting for kids! When Scholastic approached me about 'The 39 Clues', I immediately started going through the 'greatest hits' from my years as a social studies teacher, and picked the historical characters and eras that most appealed to my students.

Rick Riordan

#73. It is, I believe, no exaggeration to say that all the historical information which has been collected from all the books written in the Sanskrit language is less valuable than what may be found in the most paltry abridgement used at preparatory schools in England.

Thomas B. Macaulay

#74. In every historical period, the religious groups that grow most rapidly are those that set believers at odds with the surrounding culture.

Nancy Pearcey

#75. This cannot be stated too strongly: From the very beginning, Christianity tied itself to history. The most important claims of Christianity are historical claims, and on the facts of history the Christian religion must stand or fall.

Kevin DeYoung

#76. I shared this insight with some other boat owners, and they all agreed that, definitely, putting your boar into the water is asking for trouble. Most of them have had their boats sitting in their driveways long enough to be registered historical landmarks.

Dave Barry

#77. As discussed earlier, when it comes to music, most of us tend to have confidence in our taste even though we may totally lack knowledge regarding historical development or compositional theory. I frequently hear, "I don't know anything about art" but hardly ever, "I don't know anything about music".

Michael Findlay

#78. I'm a history buff, and right now we're sitting on one of the most dramatic historical shifts that this planet has ever seen and we have a front row seat for it.

James Daly

#79. Neither does she have a name
none that I could find even in my most persistent researches: Julian's gentle lady, I mean; she whom I sought and chased and wooed (as it were) down a warren of historical tunnels.

Walter Wangerin Jr.

#80. Have you decided yet what historical moment you would have most like to have witnessed with your own eyes and ears?

Padgett Powell

#81. Good night, my lord. The words were pronounced in her most withering tone.
By contrast, he remained quite alarmingly unwithered long after she left.

Christina Brooke

#82. It is no accident that the rise of so many democracies took place in a time when the world's most influential nation was itself a democracy.

George W. Bush

#83. This generation, raised on "Eyewitness News," conditioned by the instant replay, and spared the illumination that comes from tedious historical study, tends to be even more ahistorical than most.

Harry S. Truman

#84. For novelists, the imagination is everything. The trick is to guide one's imagination using research. I love using old maps. When I wrote my novels on London and New York, I found wonderful historical atlases. Paris has the most lavish maps of all.

Edward Rutherfurd

#85. The production of antibody is not the only, nor I believe the most important, manifestation of immunity, but for reasons both historical and of experimental convenience, antibody is likely to remain the touchstone of immunological theory.

Frank Macfarlane Burnet

#86. Some people like the Jews, and some do not. But no thoughtful man can deny the fact that they are, beyond any question, the most formidable and most remarkable race which has appeared in the world.
- Winston S. Churchill

Ellen Brazer

#87. Julia Woodhull was many things: a lady of secrets, a patriot's niece, and a dead man's daughter. But one thing Julia Woodhull was most certainly not was a fool.

Katlyn Charlesworth

#88. Most of the great results of history are brought about by discreditable means.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

#89. Most readers of historical fiction are content to just get caught up in a good story, and that is what I want to do as an author. I am not concerned with people knowing exactly what I made up and what is real.

Melanie Benjamin

#90. Want to read my most favorites books? They are Wildflowers, Bridie's Daughter, and Secrets! You'll be glad you did!

Robert Noonan

#91. Omit a few of the most abstruse sciences, and mankind's study of man occupies nearly the whole field of literature. The burden of history is what man has been; of law, what he does; of physiology, what he is; of ethics, what he ought to be; of revelation, what he shall be.

George Finlayson

#92. Sometimes history knocks at the most ordinary door to see if anyone is home. Sometimes someone is.

Robert Fulghum

#93. When you look on one of your contemporary 'good copies' of historical remains, ask yourself the question: Not what style, but in what civilization is this building? And the absurdity, vulgarity, anachronism and solecism of the modern structure will be revealed to you in a most startling fashion.

Louis Sullivan

#94. Rome is the city above all cities which loses most of its meaning to those who do not bring to it some historical sense, a decent knowledge of art, and a good amount of time. Rome therefore is particularly disturbing to an American.

Clare Boothe Luce

#95. Although most advice should be distrusted, particularly when it comes from myself ... keep an open mind, Miss Hathaway. One should never look a rich husband in the mouth. - St. Vincent

Lisa Kleypas

#96. All our lives, we long, we long, thinking it is the moon we long for. So how, when we meet it in the shape of a most fair woman, can we do less than leave all others for her? WB Yeats

Orna Ross

#97. We may feel the pain of falling back from a level of affluence to which we have grown accustomed, but most people in developed countries are still, by historical standards, extraordinarily well off.

Peter Singer

#98. Only two to three per cent of an audience is interested in words and pays attention to lyrics; most of the rest of it is about image or the beat or the sound, or else it's a tribal thing - country & western, rap, heavy metal, with historical folk rock off in some kind of cult.

Al Stewart

#99. Nothing ought to be said or done which could create the impression that unbiased reconsideration of the most elementary premises of philosophy is a merely academic or historical affair.

Leo Strauss

#100. It was most troubling to find there existed a pair of lips he would allow to insult him and yet still want to kiss immediately afterward.

Jayne Fresina