“The man who is swimming against the stream knows the strength of it.”
History is not just names and dates — it is the story of how we got here and a warning about where we might be headed. These quotes look at the past with curiosity, respect, and the awareness that those who ignore it tend to repeat it.
“De Sade is the one completely consistent and thoroughgoing revolutionary of history.”
“The man who is swimming against the stream knows the strength of it.”
“Music can be healing, and with my history and my knowledge of both sides of what looks like a gigantic divide in the world, I feel I can point a way forward to our common humanity again.”
“I loved history because to me, history was like watching a movie.”
“A pint of sweat, saves a gallon of blood.”
“In every election in American history both parties have their cliches. The party that has the cliches that ring true wins.”
“When President Obama entered the White House, the economy was in a free-fall. The auto industry: on its back. The banks: frozen up. More than three million Americans had already lost their jobs. And America's bravest, our men and women in uniform, were fighting what would soon be the longest wars in our history.”
“To be converted you have to destroy your past, destroy your history. You have to stamp on it, you have to say 'my ancestral culture does not exist, it doesn't matter.'”
“Minimalism seems closest to the sophisticated storytelling of movies. Movies have really educated contemporary audiences to be the most intelligent, sophisticated audiences in history. We don't any longer need to have the relationship between one scene and the next explained. We will figure it out ourselves.”
“Culinary tradition is not always based on fact. Sometimes it's based on history, on habits that come out of a time when kitchens were fueled by charcoal.”
“The Jews' greatest contribution to history is dissatisfaction! We're a nation born to be discontented. Whatever exists we believe can be changed for the better.”
“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.”
“Our national history has so often filled us with bitterness and the feeling of helplessness.”
“Long before history began we men have got together apart from the women and done things. We had time.”
“It is the soothing thing about history that it does repeat itself.”
“The German national character is a favorite subject of character experts, probably because the less mature a nation, the more she is an object of criticism and not of history.”