Quotes by Historians - Page 5

Of all the paths a man could strike into there is at any given moment a best path ... a thing which here and now it were of all things wisest for him to do ... to find this path and walk in it is the one thing needful for him.
Thomas Carlyle
The pleasures of the rich are bought with the tears of the poor.
Thomas Fuller
Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Working men of all countries unite!
Karl Marx
Every generation revolts against its fathers and makes friends with its grandfathers.
Lewis Mumford
All reform except a moral one will prove unavailing.
Thomas Carlyle
I try to learn one new thing a week to balance the one thing I forget a week but lately I forget three things a week.
Joseph Gies
The most dangerous moment for a bad government is when it begins to reform.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Welcome death quoth the rat when the trap fell.
Thomas Fuller
Republics are brought to their ends by luxury monarchies by poverty.
Charles Montesquieu
His religion at best is an anxious wish - like that of Rebelais a great Perhaps.
Thomas Carlyle
A good life is the only religion.
Thomas Fuller
Religion is the opium of the people.
Karl Marx
Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo.
H.G.Wells
Religion is the opiate of the people.
Karl Marx
The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world were all considered by the people as equally true by the philosopher as equally false and by the magistrate as equally useful.
Edward Gibbon
The worst hatred is that of relatives.
Tacitus
A wise man turns chance into good fortune.
Thomas Fuller
Prospect is often better than possession.
Thomas Fuller
Good is not good where better is expected.
Thomas Fuller
My early and invincible love of reading I would not exchange for the treasures of India.
Edward Gibbon
I had always assumed that cliche was a suburb of Paris until I discovered it to be a street in Oxford.
Philip Guedalla
A man surprised is half beaten.
Thomas Fuller
Forgetting of a wrong is a mild revenge.
Thomas Fuller
An acre of performance is worth the whole world of promise.
James Howell
If Jesus Christ were to come today people would not even crucify him. They would ask him to dinner and hear what he had to say and make fun of him.
Thomas Carlyle
The celebrity is a person who is known for his well-knownness.
Daniel Boorstin
All that is human must retrograde if it does not advance.
Edward Gibbon
The block of granite which was an obstacle in the path of the weak becomes a stepping stone in the path of the strong.
Thomas Carlyle
Pride had rather go out of the way than go behind.
Thomas Fuller
Pride perceiving humility honourable often borrows her cloak.
Thomas Fuller
If you are as happy my dear sir on entering this house as I am in leaving it and returning home you are the happiest man in this country.
George Buchanan
A fox should not be of the jury at a goose's trial.
Thomas Fuller
In fair weather prepare for foul.
Thomas Fuller
None can pray well but he that lives well.
Thomas Fuller
Prayer should be the key of the day and the lock of the night.
Thomas Fuller
The sweetest of all sounds is praise.
Xenophon
Lust of power is the most flagrant of all the passions.
Tacitus
He was one of those men who possess almost every gift except the gift of the power to use them.
Charles Kingsley
Unused power slips imperceptibly into the hands of another.
Konrad Heiden
Power in America today is control of the means of communication.
Theodore White
Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.
Herodotus
Poor men's reasons are not heard.
Thomas Fuller
It is by sitting down to write every morning that he becomes a writer. Those who do not do this remain amateurs.
Gerald Brenan
Every noble work is at first impossible.
Thomas Carlyle
He is happy that knoweth not himself to be otherwise.
Thomas Fuller
The most unhappy of all men is he who believes himself to be so.
David Hume
Those see nothing but faults that seek for nothing else.
Thomas Fuller
This organization (United Nations) is created to prevent you from going to hell. It isn't created to take you to heaven.
Henry Cabot Lodge
There is no excitement anywhere in the world short of war to match the excitement of the American presidential campaign.
Theodore White
Nothing was ever done so systematically as nothing is being done now.
Woodrow Wilson
Politics as a practice whatever its professions has always been the systematic organization of hatreds.
Henry Adams
There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it.
Lord Acton
In politics a community of hatred is almost always the foundation of friendships.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Practical politics consists in ignoring facts.
Henry Adams
Politicians make good company for a while just as children do - their self-enjoyment is contagious. But they soon exhaust their favourite subjects -themselves.
Garry Wills
The fact that a reactionary can sometimes be right is a little less recognized that the fact that a liberal can be. . . .
Joseph Gies
All I know is I'm not a Marxist.
Karl Marx
A gentleman is mindful no less of the freedom of others than of his own dignity.
Livy
Poetry is the opening and closing of a door leaving those who look through to guess what is seen during a moment.
Carl Sandburg
Poetry is the journal of a sea animal living on land wanting to fly in the air.
Carl Sandburg