Quotes about History

To keep its past as part of its present, God gives to Israel a series of rituals, routines, and rhythms.

This both/and interpretation makes sense in the Jewish context. Jesus has in mind the Anawim, a group of economically disadvantaged Jews (Ps 149:4; Isa 49:13; 61:1—2; 66:2).27 Historians of Jewish history now mostly agree that the Anawim had three features: they were economically poor and yet trusted in God, they found their way to the temple as a meeting place, and they longed for the Messiah, who would finally bring justice.

Salvation history reveals sin as literally a broken home.

I mean it used to be, there was a time … when lynchings of African Americans were not that incredibly rare. Now the lynchings are the police and it's just an outrage.

Geological time is not money.

History can be formed from permanent monuments and records; but lives can only be written from personal knowledge, which is growing every day less, and in a short time is lost forever.

We are living at an extraordinary time in human history. And for many of us things are great. Things are great for me.

All men have heard of the Mormon Bible, but few except the elect have seen it, or, at least, taken the trouble to read it. I brought away a copy from Salt Lake. The book is a curiosity to me, it is such a pretentious affair, and yet so slow, so sleepy; such an insipid mess of inspiration. It is chloroform in print. If Joseph Smith composed this book, the act was a miracle — keeping awake while he did it was, at any rate.

Peace by persuasion has a pleasant sound, but I think we should not be able to work it. We should have to tame the human race first, and history seems to show that that cannot be done.

I like Joan of Arc best of all my books; and it is the best; I know it perfectly well.

This book is merely a personal narrative, and not a pretentious history or a philosophical dissertation. It is a record of several years of variegated vagabondizing, and it's object is rather to help the resting reader while away an idle hour than afflict him with metaphysics, or goad him with science.

And always we had wars, and more wars, and still other wars--all over Europe, all over the world. Sometimes in the private interest of royal families, Satan said, sometimes to crush a weak nation; but never a war started by the aggressor for any clean purpose--there is no such war in the history of the race.