951 private quotes tagged history

“I don't have incredible knowledge about films or of filmmaking history I'm not that kind of person.”— Ang Lee

“Black people don't have an accurate idea of their history, which has been either suppressed or distorted.”— Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

“All I know is that history repeats itself and people are going to want to experience the world. But I know then they are going to have a better appreciation for what is here in Maine.”— John Baldacci

“Religion has caused more misery to all of mankind in every stage of human history than any other single idea.”— Madalyn Murray O'Hair

“History proves that all dictatorships, all authoritarian forms of government are transient. Only democratic systems are not transient. Whatever the shortcomings, mankind has not devised anything superior.”— Vladimir Putin

“The history of my life must begin by the earliest circumstance which my memory can evoke it will therefore commence when I had attained the age of eight years and four months.”— Giacomo Casanova

“We are living in the machine age. For the first time in history the comedian has been compelled to supply himself with jokes and comedy material to compete with the machine. Whether he knows it or not, the comedian is on a treadmill to oblivion.”— Fred Allen

“Gluttony might be innocuous were it not for the fact that gluttons tend to disregard whether their self-serving behaviors harm anyone else. We don't need to look far and wide to find examples of gluttonous behavior, as they are numerous throughout the history of capitalism.”— Simon Mainwaring

“All in all, for someone who was immersed in, fascinated by, and dedicated to flight, I was disappointed by the wrinkle in history that had brought me along one generation late. I had missed all the great times and adventures in flight.”— Neil Armstrong

“The history of the world shows that peoples and societies do not have to pass through a fixed series of stages in the course of development.”— Aung San Suu Kyi

“History will see advertising as one of the real evil things of our time. It is stimulating people constantly to want things, want this, want that.”— Malcolm Muggeridge

“Jewelry and pins have been worn throughout history as symbols of power, sending messages. Interestingly enough, it was mostly men who wore the jewelry in various times, and obviously crowns were part of signals that were being sent throughout history by people of rank.”— Madeleine Albright

“You can't fake this music. You might be a great singer or a great musician but, in the need, that's got nothing to do with it. It's how you connect to the songs and to the history behind them.”— Etta James

“You look at the greatest villains in human history, the fascists, the autocrats, they all wanted people to kneel before them because they don't love themselves enough.”— Tom Hiddleston

“In a sense, words are encyclopedias of ignorance because they freeze perceptions at one moment in history and then insist we continue to use these frozen perceptions when we should be doing better.”— Edward de Bono

“I am totally fascinated by people and our history as I understand and continue to explore it. People have so much to give and so far to go and yet we have given and gone a great distance. It's really just interesting to ask: why not? And see where that takes me.”— Nikki Giovanni

“Dorothy is the only woman in history who has had her menopause in public and made it pay.”— Alice Roosevelt Longworth

“I really like to look like a history book. I can look 1940s, I can look 1970s hippie-chic, or sometimes I'll pull that '80s Brooklyn hip-hop kid with the door-knocker earrings.”— Katy Perry

“History is the only true teacher, the revolution the best school for the proletariat.”— Rosa Luxemburg

“The Establishment center... has led us into the stupidest and cruelest war in all history. That war is a moral and political disaster - a terrible cancer eating away at the soul of our nation.”— George McGovern

“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

“Even in high school I was very interested in history - why people do the things they do. As a kid I spent a lot of time trying to relate the past to the present.”— George Lucas

“We, therefore, here in Britain stand shoulder to shoulder with our American friends in this hour of tragedy, and we, like them, will not rest until this evil is driven from our world.”— Tony Blair

“No people in history have ever survived who thought they could protect their freedom by making themselves inoffensive to their enemies.”— Dean Acheson

“The new rage is to say that the government is the cause of all our problems, and if only we had no government, we'd have no problems. I can tell you, that contradicts evidence, history, and common sense.”— William J. Clinton