Quotes About Understanding History

#1. Can one understand politics without understanding history, especially the history of political thought, and will this distinguish political philosophy from some other kinds of philosophy (such as, perhaps, logic) to which the study of history is not integral?

Raymond Geuss

#2. It is my object, in the following work, to travel over ground which has as yet been little explored and to make my reader acquainted with a species of Remains, which, though absolutely necessary for understanding the history of the globe, have been hitherto almost uniformly neglected.

Georges Cuvier

#3. Understanding anyone begins with the person's family history and the culture he or she is a part of.

Pat Brown

#4. The idea that a student can write a sonnet or a novel without having a sound understanding about its history, and where it fits into literature as a whole, seems to me to be manifestly daft.

Nicholas Royle

#5. One must look hard through history to find when a clear understanding of the truth moved anyone to fire the first shot.

Robert Breault

#6. And though history sadly doesn't credit the man who first thought of tilting a bicycle's steering axis, it is more likely to be because of feet striking the wheel than an understanding of stability.

Robert Penn

#7. Capricious and unfaithful, the king wished to be called Louis the Just and Louis the Chaste. Posterity will find a difficulty in understanding this character, which history explains only by facts and never by reason.

Alexandre Dumas

#8. History, well taught, is the demythologising of the past ... Take any important issue of our time - Northern Ireland, Nuclear Disarmament, Race, The Welfare State, South Africa - and it becomes impossible to seriously confront any of them without understanding their historical background.

Alan Bullock

#9. understanding can only come from a recognition of each other's history.

Sandy Tolan

#10. Analysis of soil, grave goods and skeletons has been key to our understanding of archaeology and the migration of peoples, as well as their daily lives. But in mainstream history, we tend to stick to documents.

Kate Williams

#11. None of the participants ever arrived at a clear understanding of the actual horror of Auschwitz, which is of a different nature from all the atrocities of the past, because it appeared to prosecution alike as not much more than the most horrible pogrom in Jewish history.

Hannah Arendt

#12. Even a quick reading of Rizal's trial will prove that those who take Constantino's works uncritically are likewise guilty of "Veneration Without Understanding." Since there is so much fiction and faction in history it is always essential to return to the sources.

Ambeth R. Ocampo

#13. Read a certain way, the Natural History is preposterous, full of erroneous assumptions and cast-off mythology. Read another way, it is a window into Roman understanding two millennia ago. Read another way, it is a tribute to wonder itself

Anthony Doerr

#14. With the historian it is an article of faith that knowledge of the past is a key to understanding the present.

Kenneth M. Stampp

#15. To gain an understanding of the mind leads on to an appreciation of what it means to be human.

Steven Mithen

#16. The function off the historian is neither to love the past nor to emancipate himself from the past, but to master and understand it as the key to the understanding of the present.

Edward Hallett Carr

#17. Presently, the Commission for Commemorating 350 Years of American Jewish History has been brought about to encourage and sponsor a variety of historical activities that advance our understanding of the American Jewish experience as it marks this milestone anniversary.

Jon Porter

#18. But ignorance of divine revelation affects all of thought and life, from one's view toward history and philosophy, to one's interpretation of music and literature, to one's understanding of mathematics and physics.

Vincent Cheung

#19. The emotional garbage I had carried all of those years - the prejudice and the denial, the shame and the guilt - was dissolved by understanding that the Other is not other at all.

John Howard Griffin

#20. The deciphering of ancient scripts changed forever the way Europeans were able to imagine the story of humanity, destroying centuries of received authority about the past with repercussions as important for our understanding of time and history as the geological studies of the same period.

Neil MacGregor

#21. Always it comes very slowly the completed understanding of it, the repeating each one does to tell it the whole history of the being in each one, always now I hear it. Always now slowly I
understand it.

Gertrude Stein

#22. We will soon create intelligences greater than our own ... When this happens, human history will have reached a kind of singularity, an intellectual transition as impenetrable as the knotted space-time at the center of a black hole, and the world will pass far beyond our understanding.

Vernor Vinge

#23. Our ability to look back on the past, our need or desire to make sense of it, is both a blessing and a curse; and our inability to see into the future with any degree of accuracy is, simultaneously, the thing that saves us and the thing that condemns us.

James Robertson

#24. Modern dynamical systems theory has a relatively short history. It begins with Poincare (of course) ... [to whom] a global understanding of the gross behavior of all solutions of the system was more important than the local behavior of particular, analytically-precise solutions.

Robert L. Devaney

#25. The history of the building of the American nation may justly be described as a laboratory experiment in understanding and in solving the problems that will confront the world tomorrow.

Nicholas Murray Butler

#26. I had always looked down on sociology as this arriviste discipline. It didn't have the noble history of English and history as a subject. But once I had a little exposure to it, I said, 'Hey, here's the key. Here's the key to understanding life and all its forms.'

Tom Wolfe

#27. I think all of the secrets of the universe are revealed in history. We understand who we are by understanding where we've been and why we are the way we are, and where we come from.

Matt Barr

#28. We want to assist China's soft power; we want to develop a vibrant young cinema in China. The average American has no understanding whatsoever of China. We'd like to create a young generation to tell their stories on a world stage. We can make history as well as make money.

Robert Friedland

#29. I've always had a Marxist understanding of history: democracy is a result of a broad modernization process that happens in every country. Neocons think the use of political power can force the pace of change, but ultimately it depends on societies doing it themselves.

Francis Fukuyama

#30. It is only when people don't know history well that they judge the present so blindly in ignorance!

Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

#31. At her tender age she was incapable of understanding such a history,

Christine Feehan

#32. We are living in an era in which billions of people are grappling to promote communication, tolerance, and understanding over the more destructive forces of war, terrorism, and political chaos that have characterized the beginning of the 21st Century.

Aberjhani

#33. The advantages found in history seem to be of three kinds, as it amuses the fancy, as it improves the understanding, and as it strengthens virtue.

David Hume

#34. Understanding the times means understanding the course of history and civilization, as well as understanding the present situation. If we understand how God guides the development of human history, we can begin to understand the therapies needed to correct the problems of our times.

James B. Jordan

#35. But having a really good understanding of history, literature, psychology, sciences - is very, very important to actually being able to make movies.

George Lucas

#36. However rich we may become in knowledge of the deeper causes of historical results, we forgo all understanding of history if we forget this inner continuity,
i.e., the conscious intentions of the participants in history-making and their consciously known successes.

William Ernest Hocking

#37. History teaches us every day; our understanding is the matter!

Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

#38. Literature recounts history, explores knowledge, narrates universal themes of human existence, actives human conscience, enhances understanding of human motives, and explicates the nuances of human behavior.

Kilroy J. Oldster

#39. The 3-legged stool of understanding is held up by history, languages, and mathematics. Equipped with those three you can learn anything you want to learn. But if you lack any one of them you are just another ignorant peasant with dung on your boots.

Robert A. Heinlein

#40. History is not just about the analysis of evidence, unrolling vellum documents or answering exam papers. It is not about judging the dead. It is about understanding the meaning of the past - to realize the whole evolving human story over centuries, not just our own lifetimes.

Ian Mortimer

#41. Do not mistake the history you have shared for the slightest understanding of what our marriage is, or how insignificant you are in comparison.

Frank Underwood

#42. History may clarify our understanding of the supreme work of art, but can never account for it completely; for the Time of art is not the same as the Time of history.

Andre Malraux

#43. It was frustrating and exhausting to gather bits of disconnected information without understanding how it all fitted together.

Wendy Percival

#44. to know your past is to know your future. Where lies the strength of the stem and the fruits of the branches when the roots are rotten?

Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

#45. There are so many levels of understanding and experience when it comes to this thing we call love. In our human relationships, it can be vastly complicated. Each of us has our own unique love-history, perceptions, and expectations.

Michael Beckwith

#46. I've spoken with friends who are rabbis and priests and we've agreed that most people have an emotional attachment to their faith, a desire to fulfill their spiritual longings, but they are not experts in understanding the history of their religion.

Feisal Abdul Rauf

#47. If you need to know history, the real story of those before you, then you should go to the library and read newspaper clippings of someone like Muhammad Ali every day, then it might giver you some understanding of the man.

Alex Haley

#48. Culture is a window reflecting the history, culture and spiritual world of a nation, .. Cultural exchange is a bridge to enhance the mutual understanding and friendship between the people of different nations.

Hu Jintao

#49. One does not realize the historical sensation as a re-experiencing, but as an understanding that is closely related to the understanding of music, or rather of the world by means of music.

Johan Huizinga

#50. Believe me, as one who has seen a number of international crises firsthand, they cannot be handled without an understanding of history.

Pierre Salinger

#51. Knowing what paint a painter uses or having an understanding of where he was in the history of where he came from doesn't hurt your appreciation of the painting.

Jodie Foster

#52. The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.

George Orwell

#53. The point of history, the very essence of it as a field of study, is to find correspondences. You look at the past so that you can understand it, and through it you come to a better understanding of your own time. If you're lucky, sometimes you can even extrapolate to possible futures." "I'm not

M.R. Carey

#54. A rich and mature life involves opening up to a wider world. If we base our understanding of life only on what we personally experience, we are impoverished indeed.

Robert Strayer

#55. But Clara's father believed that nations never see themselves clearly in the mirror, much less when war preys on their minds. He had a good understanding of history and knew that the future could be read much more clearly in the streets, factories, and barracks than in the morning press.

Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#56. In order to witness clearly the march of humanity from its inception to the present moment, an understanding of how humankind has held encounter with the divine as central is crucial. Ancient humanity provides us with an excellent laboratory for gaining such an understanding.

Roger D. Woodard

#57. In the teaching of geography and history a sympathetic understanding (should) be fostered for the characteristics of the different peoples of the world, especially for those who we are in the habit of describing as primitive.

Albert Einstein

#58. Neither the life of an individual nor the history of a society can be understood without understanding both.

C. Wright Mills

#59. But colonization had a nasty tendency to work its way into the DNA, the beliefs and philosophies and the very ways of life of the people being colonized.

Drew Hayden Taylor

#60. I've always been interested in foreign relations. It's my belief that study of history should be our preparation for understanding the present rather than an escape from it.

Elizabeth Kostova

#61. God acts in history: that is, God provides ideas, methods, and experiences intended to bring comprehension to man, an understanding heart, a conscious life.

Jacob Needleman

#62. Since the middle of the twentieth century, our understanding of the American past has been revolutionized, in no small part because of our altered conceptions of the place of race in the nation's history.

Drew Gilpin Faust

#63. 1926 was the most significant year. Looking back, it seems that it was not just a year in the sense of time. It was a year of great realisation or awareness. It seems to me that at certain times of the history of man, the understanding of certain situations ripens.

Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe

#64. History's peddler, chapman, drummer, canvasser, commercial traveler, hawker, and packman may be gone from our roadways. But their indomitable spirit and unflagging optimism, along with an understanding of human nature, will endure in each of us who choose to follow their lead.

Ronald Solberg

#65. Parsons argued that medicine was a social institution that regulated social deviance through the provision of medical diagnoses for nonconforming behavior. Medicine was, in this understanding, engaged in social control.

Sheila Jeffreys

#66. Adolescence is the time to enlarge the natural sentiments of pity, friendship, and generosity, the time to develop an understanding of human nature and the varieties of human character, the time to gain insight into the strengths and weaknesses of all men and to study the history of mankind.

Louise J. Kaplan

#67. But history is neither watchmaking nor cabinet construction. It is an endeavor toward better understanding.

Marc Bloch

#68. Throughout its history, the international Olympic Committee has struggled to spread its ideal of fraternity, friendship, peace and universal understanding.

Juan Antonio Samaranch

#69. My goal was to have as many of the primary sources as I could made available for people to look at and understand. Climate change is probably the most important thing that's ever happened, and yet people's understanding of it and its history remains a little fuzzy.

Bill McKibben

#70. The equation of evolution with progress represents our strongest cultural impediment to a proper understanding of this greatest biological revolution in the history of human thought.

Stephen Jay Gould

#71. So with each advance in understanding come new questions. So we need to be very humble. We shouldn't have hubris and think that we can understand everything. But history tells us that there is good reason to believe that we will continue making fantastic progress in the years ahead.

Max Tegmark

#72. The history of science shows that theories are perishable. With every new truth that is revealed we get a better understanding of Nature and our conceptions and views are modified.

Nikola Tesla

#73. If you don't know history,
you don't know anything.
Edward Johnston

Richard Puz

#74. The appeal to the 'natural' is one of the most powerful aspects of common-sense thinking but it is a way of understanding social relations which denies history and the possibility of change for the future.

Chris Weedon

#75. find it interesting that in history all one had to do to discredit a woman was label her a witch. How do we discredit a strong woman today?" The class stared back at Wilson, not understanding. And then it clicked. "You label her a bitch," I offered boldly. The

Amy Harmon

#76. Is it possible for white America to really understand blacks' distrust of the legal system, their fears of racial profiling and the police, without understanding how cheap a black life was for so long a time in our nation's history?

Philip Dray

#77. Without an understanding of history, we are politically, culturally and socially impoverished. If we sacrifice history to economic pressures or to budget cuts, we will lose a part of who we are.

Antony Beevor

#78. The great philosophers and the great works are standards for the selection of what is essential. Everything that we do in studying the history of philosophy ultimately serves their better understanding.

Karl Jaspers

#79. So when one adjusts for population size, the availability bias, and historical myopia, it is far from clear that the 20th century was the bloodiest in history. Sweeping that dogma out of the way is the first step in understanding the historical trajectory of war.

Steven Pinker

#80. More than a needed biography of Ehrenburg ... Tangled Loyalties is a contribution of much significance to our understanding of the history of Russia in Stalin's time and of her relations with the West.

Robert C. Tucker

#81. 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

#82. Commemorations can stimulate debate, which will ultimately lead to a greater understanding of the events of our 'through-other' history and to shape a better future.

Martin McGuinness

#83. Understanding the long, sordid history of gun control in America is key to understanding the dangers of disarming.

Niger Innis

#84. He stared at me with bitter understanding.
We both knew there was no room in this for friendship. Nothing left but childhood history.

Lisa Kleypas

#85. It's an incredible education [for the movie J. Edgar Hoover] . It was like I did a college course on J. Edgar Hoover but not knowing and understanding the history and reading the books, but understanding what motivated this man was the most fascinating part of the research.

Dustin Lance Black

#86. If you know a person's history, you can use it to help predict what that person might do. A person's history can be the key to understanding his motivation for committing a crime.

Julia Spencer-Fleming

#87. To cite the facts of history is to fall prey to 'moral equivalence,' or 'political correctness,' or 'the error of of atheism,' or one of the other misdeeds concocted to guard against the sins of understanding and insight into the real world.

Noam Chomsky

#88. It's important not to base your ambition on anybody else's history, but to figure out how best to use your own particular personality and understanding of yourself to help tell other people's stories.

Harrison Ford

#89. You aren't supposed to learn that dedicated, committed effort can bring about significant changes of consciousness and understanding. That's a very dangerous idea, and therefore it's been wiped out of history.

Noam Chomsky

#90. When you travel the world, you have to watch and you have to listen. We're not going to come in to Ireland without an understanding that there's a history that's very sensitive.

Chuck D

#91. Most of the words we use in history and everyday speech are like mental depth charges. As they descend [through our consciousness] and detonate, their resonant power is unleashed, showering our understanding with fragments of accumulated meaning and association.

James Axtell

#92. And my interest in history was, and remains, very strong: what I wanted was to understand certain things better by understanding them psychoanalytically.

Peter Gay

#93. Judgement is always based on experience and sometimes you will battle a person's history first, before commonsense will ever win the war.

Shannon L. Alder

#94. Nothing in recent history makes any sense without a deep understanding of WWII and The Holocaust.

A.E. Samaan

#95. ... it should be remembered that the atomicity of electric charge has already found its expression in the specific numerical value of the fine structure constant, a theoretical understanding of which is still missing today.

Wolfgang Pauli

#96. History will help to remedy intellectual faults such as excessive concentration on one line of thought, absence of understanding for other points of view, belief in simple solutions, lack of balance of mind, absence of an imaginative understanding.

Geoffrey Elton

#97. The Indians used to be the only inhabitants of the Americas, but times change. Having perceived us as belonging to history, they are free to emote over us, to re-create us in their history-based understanding, and dismiss our present lives as archaic and irrelevant to the times.

Paula Gunn Allen

#98. He who doesn't understand history is doomed to repeat it.

Pittacus Lore

#99. Without a good understanding of history how can we make informed and therefore good and sensible decisions about current issues? The future then can only be made better by knowledge of the past.

Keith Tonkin

#100. What do you care?" Arik Siq asked. "Who your people were matters hardly at all. Who they are now is what matters. Who you are." "Your history is sometimes a way of understanding your present," Pan replied. "You are your history.

Terry Brooks