Historical Quotes

As a citizen of the post-historical variety, I am in continual mourning and prepared for worse.

There is no self-knowledge except historical self-knowledge. No one knows what he is if he doesn't know what his contemporaries are.

Many of the historical proverbs have a doubtful paternity.

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

A judgment pronounced in accordance with the facts can therefore assign to it an historical place only within that movement of reformation which was brought to a victorious issue by King Josiah.

And finally, it was Deuteronomy that brought about the historical result of Josiah's reformation.

I've managed to include only enough historical detail to give the "flavor" of the time period while keeping the characters and story focal.

I love historical romance, absolutely love it.

Art of course survives on the walls of private dwellings and corporate offices, but it 'dies' in the sense of losing its public, community-gathering, world-historical significance.

I keep waiting for the day in which everyone who loves Downton Abbey will realize they were actually watching a historical romance novel.

The Odyssey is the story of Americans up to the point where they are well-established, and even so it is detached from the historical side.

It's such an extraordinary time to be alive that you just don't want to miss it. I mean, it's a really neat historical period.

The argument that today's National Guardsmen, members of a select militia, would constitute the only persons entitled to keep and bear arms has no historical foundation.

Just as our historical beginnings are utterly mysterious-why are we born? why when and as we are?-so too are the beginnings of works of art and of "artists.

All societies are historical.

It is a great pity that every human being does not, at an early stage of his life, have to write a historical work. He would then realize that the human race is in quite a jam about truth.

For man as an historical creature has desires of indeterminate dimensions.

The New Testament is not a historical document.

As much as I care about historical context - I'm very eager to read a really great historical account.

I think if you place Jesus firmly in the historical context... you can make very educated hypotheses and guesses about how he lived.

It's so damn hard to write a great historical mystery based on fact. It's not for lack of trying.

Any Southern nationalist movement, especially one that wraps itself in the Confederate flag, is going to be viewed with suspicion, given the historical record.

There is no law of history any more than of a kaleidoscope.

But we have a war of ideals and ideas, and that is to sell democracy.

We've actually bought quite a number of historical pieces. We are doing a piece on the abolitionists, Harper's Ferry and the abolitionist John Brown with Paul Giamatti.

1975 is as much a historical document as 1803.

No historical analogies are exactly precise.

I'm pretty fortunate that I'm in the films I'm in largely because the directors have asked me to be in them. I'd love to do more of them, but the writing and historical stuff I'll probably always do.

The history of science is science itself; the history of the individual, the individual.

There is no greater advocate of perestroika than the president of the United States.

I think I'm too lazy a writer to do something like historical fiction. You have to do so much research. I just write what I know.

Research is always a very necessary part of my process because all of my books to this point have been historical. Time spent in the library adds to one's wealth as a writer or artist.

You don't go to the movies to do historical research, unless it's historical research about the movies.

Mitterrand had a sense for symbols, and he was the first Socialist president since 1958. He wanted to show that there is historical continuity, a connection with the great figures of French history.

I prefer to have all of this apparatus - historical, literary, critical - and then, beyond initial innocence and naiveté, to try to achieve a new innocence, a new naiveté.

It's kind of alarming for me to realize that, when I'm writing stories about times I remember, it's already historical fiction.

Historical! Must it be historical to catch your attention? Even though historicity, like notoriety, denotes nothing more than thatsomething has occurred.

Nothing genuinely historical was ever lost in this country. For this reason we have two ruling parties: villains and fools.

it is not the inferiority of women that has caused their historical insignificance; it is rather their historical insignificance that has doomed them to inferiority.

All the spookiness comes from giving a contemporary anachronistic sense to terms whose historical meaning is lost to us.

The really historical performance would talk to ghosts.

We must help the reformers of the Middle East as they work for freedom, and strive to build a community of peaceful, democratic nations.

[T]he people as ultimate sovereigns, retain the ultimate power - and even the duty - to overthrow any government that fails to respect their authority.

I always wanted to be historical, from almost a baby on, I felt that way about it.

I enjoyed studying costume, learning about the corsetry and the historical context of fashion. I never had any real intention of being a costume designer.

Happiness is more effectually dispensed to mankind under a republican form of government than any other.

Our aim is a democratic peace.

As the 20th century ended, there were around 120 democracies in the world - and I can assure you more are on the way.

On the basis of my historical experience, I fully believe that mathematics of the 25th century will be as different from that of today as the latter is from that of the 16th century.

Whole swaths of the book [Lincoln in the Bardo] are made up of verbatim quotes from various historical sources, which I cut up and rearranged to form part of the narrative.