The actual results of political diplomacy can openly be seen in critical moments. Turkey can insist on leading a very successful foreign policy, however, the acceptance of the fact of the Armenian Genocide by any influential global organization evide...
Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. Without books, the development of civilization would have been impossible. They are engines of chang...
The poetry of history lies in the quasi-miraculous fact that once, on this earth, once, on this familiar spot of ground, walked other men and women, as actual as we are today, thinking their own thoughts, swayed by their own passions, but now all gon...
Boethius moved from considering history from the actor's point of view to a "timeless" eternal view. From the divine perspective, nothing is ever utterly lost, because all of life is possessed by God in the eternal now. Though time was gnawing away a...
We seem to live in a world where forgetting and oblivion are an industry in themselves and very, very few people are remotely interested or aware of their own recent history, much less their neighbors'. I tend to think we are what we remember, what w...
Should any political party attempt to abolish social security unemployment insurance and eliminate labor laws and farm programs you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group of course that believes yo...
Pirates are evil!!? The Marines are righteous!!? These terms have always changed throughout the course of history...!!! Kids who have never seen peace and kids who have never seen war have different values!!! Those who stand at the top determine what...
In science's pecking order, evolutionary biology lurks somewhere near the bottom, far closer to phrenology than to physics. For evolutionary biology is a historical science, laden with history's inevitable imponderables. We evolutionary biologists ca...
Coach Norman Dale: [after history class] What's on your mind? Everett Flatch: Well, coach... what you're doin' with my dad. I'm not seein' it. I mean, he's a drunk, he'll do somethin' stupid... Coach Norman Dale: When's the last time anyone gave your...
Librarian: What is thee wish? Macaulay Connor: I'm looking for some local b - what'd you say? Librarian: What is thee wish? Macaulay Connor: Um, local biography or history. Librarian: If thee will consult with my colleague in there. Macaulay Connor: ...
[first lines] Joan Lunden: Robin Williger. He is a 15 year old freshman from Racine, Wisconsin. He enjoys studying history; he's on the debate team. Robin's future looked very, very bright. But recently he was diagnosed with cancer, a very tough kind...
Dean Vernon Wormer: Have you boys seen your grade point averages yet? [the Deltas are silent] Dean Vernon Wormer: Well, have you? Hoover: I have, sir. I know it's a little below par... Dean Vernon Wormer: It's more than a little below par, Mr. Hoover...
I think that the thematic, formal history of the literary form ultimately harkens back to a different political system. That is to say, a feudal order: the aristocratic dispensation of leisure time, the refinements of the self. With the shift from fe...
And I despise your books, I despise wisdom and the blessings of this world. It is all worthless, fleeting, illusory, and deceptive, like a mirage. You may be proud, wise, and fine, but death will wipe you off the face of the earth as though you were ...
Juliet by Ann Fortier. The Maestro (Chapter5) ... the slight nausea he was feeling must be somewhat near what God was feeling every minute of every day. If indeed He felt anything. He was, after all, a divine being, and it was entirely conceivable th...
Nixon is fascinating because he's our most alienated president. Everybody felt that they never knew who he was - that's palpable in the histories. His face is so cartoony that he's become this cartoon figure. I never really related to the romanticiza...
History has taught us that often lies serve her better than the truth, for man is sluggish and has to be led through the desert for forty years before each step in his development. And he has to be driven through the desert with threats and promises,...
Every story has already been told. Once you've read Anna Karenina, Bleak House, The Sound and the Fury, To Kill a Mockingbird and A Wrinkle in Time, you understand that there is really no reason to ever write another novel. Except that each writer br...
When an entire segment of the world is burned and reduced to a lawless battleground for thugs and mercenaries, a land where government does not exist, where the slate of history is being wiped out and hope has drowned in gallons of innocent blood, th...
... the slight nausea he was feeling must be somewhat neat what God was feeling every minute of every day. If indeed He felt anything. He was, after all, a divine being, and it was entirely conceivable that divinity was incompatible with emotion. If ...
...he is thinking about thoughts; so many thoughts piled up, such a quantity of half-remembered knowledge, so many emotions brought up from the well to spill out: the unrolling of history - a river into which you can't step twice, a collection of bio...
