In history people dressed much better than we do today.

“The history of which peoples, nations, or civilizations have conquered or enslaved which other peoples, nations, or civilizations has been largely a history of who has been in a position to do so.” 

“As history has also shown, especially in the twentieth century, one of the first things an ideologue will do after achieving absolute power is kill.” 

“Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good.” 

“History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme.”

“History is a child building a sandcastle by the sea, and that child is the whole majesty of man's power in the world.” 

There is properly no history; only biography.

History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.

History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.

Let us strive for the impossible. The great achievements throughout history have been the conquest of what seemed the impossible.

“Thinking about our schooling in different decades and parts of the country, all three of us in that kitchen discover that we were taught more about ancient Greece and Rome than about the history of the land we live on. We learned about the pyramid builders of Egypt but not the pyramid builders of the Mississippi River.” 

We change people's lives, at the risk of our own. We change countries, governments, history, gravity. After gravity, culture is the thing that holds humanity in place, in an otherwise constantly shifting and, let's face it, tiny outcrop in the middle of an infinity of nowhere

We change people's lives, at the risk of our own. We change countries, governments, history, gravity. After gravity, culture is the thing that holds humanity in place, in an otherwise constantly shifting and, let's face it, tiny outcrop in the middle of an infinity of nowhere.”

“History is a pack of lies about events that never happened told by people who weren’t there.”

“History is always written wrong, and so always needs to be rewritten.”

“There is history in what is dismissed as prehistory.” 

“The need of exercise is a modern superstition, invented by people who ate too much and had nothing to think about. Athletics don’t make anybody long-lived or useful.”

“Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

“History is a pack of lies about events that never happened told by people who weren't there. . . . History is always written wrong, and so always needs to be rewritten”

Throughout history in the theater and film people do like sarcastic characters, and they do like curmudgeons - if they're amusing, they do like them despite the fact that they're vitriolic, particularly if they're for the right thing. If you can see that the person is a decent person and is for the right thing, and is not just a nasty person with base motives, but someone who is a decent human but expresses himself.

“There is history in what is dismissed as prehistory.” 

“I believe what really happens in history is this: the old man is always wrong; and the young people are always wrong about what is wrong with him. The practical form it takes is this: that, while the old man may stand by some stupid custom, the young man always attacks it with some theory that turns out to be equally stupid.”

“In the long run, the world is going to have the best, and any difference in race, religion, or previous history will not long keep the world from what it wants.”

Power properly understood is nothing but the ability to achieve purpose… one of the great problems of history is that the concepts of love and power have usually been contrasted as opposites – polar opposites – so that love is identified with a resignation of power, and power with a denial of love.