No subscription or hidden extras
Read through the most famous quotes by topic #history
In comparison, young unmarried women in America were fortunate: They had a certain measure of sexual freedom. Eighteenth-century parents allowed their daughters to spend tie with suitors unsupervised, and courting couples openly engaged in "bundling," the practice of sleeping together without undressing, in the girls' homes. (Theoretically, that is, they were sleeping together without undressing: in fact, premarital pregnancy boomed during the period of 1750 to 1780, when bundling was nearly universal.) But by the turn of the century, in a complete reversal of previous beliefs about women's sexuality, the idea took hold that only men were carnal creatures; women were thought to be passionless and therefore morally superior. ↗
What unites conservatives and modernizers and young and old, is a hunger not for freedom but for justice; for genuine rule of law, not rule by royal whim. They want a government that is a transparent and accountable, one that provides standards services such as are available in far less wealthy societies: good education, job, affordable housing , and decent health care. ↗
For the anarch, things are not so simple, especially when he has a background in history. If he remains free of being ruled, whether by sovereigns or by society, this does not mean that he refuses to serve in any way. In general, he serves no worse than anyone else, and sometimes even better, if he likes the game. He only holds back from the pledge, the sacrifice, the ultimate devotion. These are issues of metaphysical integrity.... ↗
When William Johnson and slave walked down that long, winding American road toward freedom and justice, they didn't realize they would be speaking out for all those left behind. They learned that it would take hard work to make the words of the Declaration of Independence mean what they said. Ellen and William Craft were willing to do their part. ↗
In the end I believe the essential spirit that animates those places animates me. If that spirit is God, then I found God...If that spirit is life, then I found life...If that spirit is awe, then I found awe. Part of me suspects it's all three...all I had to do to discover that spirit and the resulting feeling of humility and appreciation was not to look or listen or taste or feel. All I had to do was remember, for what I was looking for I somehow already knew. ↗
Toujours les même excellentes intentions qui pavent si bien l'enfer, l'enfer des camps de concentration. Léon Blum est un homme d'une intelligence raffinée, d'une grande culture, il aime Stendhal, il a sans doute lu et relu la Chartreuse de Parme; il lui manque cependant cette pointe de cynisme indispensable à la clairvoyance. On peut tout trouver dans les rangs de la social-démocratie, sauf des esprits véritablement libres. La doctrine est cependant souple, sujette à autant d'interprétations et modifications qu'on voudra; mais il n'est jamais bon d'avoir derrière soi une doctrine, surtout quand elle enferme le dogme du progrès, la confiance inébranble dans l'histoire et dans les masses. Marx n'est pas un bon auteur pour former le jugement; Machiavel vaut infiniment mieux. ↗
Among the many worlds which man did not receive as a gift of nature, but which he created with his own mind, the world of books is the greatest. Every child, scrawling his first letters on his slate and attempting to read for the first time, in so doing, enters an artificial and complicated world; to know the laws and rules of this world completely and to practice them perfectly, no single human life is long enough. Without words, without writing, and without books there would be no history, there could be no concept of humanity. And if anyone wants to try to enclose in a small space in a single house or single room, the history of the human spirit and to make it his own, he can only do this in the form of a collection of books. ↗
#history #literature #words #life
The whole tendency of modern life is towards scientific planning and organisation, central control, standardisation, and specialisation. If this tendency was left to work itself out to its extreme conclusion, one might expect to see the state transformed into an immense social machine, all the individual components of which are strictly limited to the performance of a definite and specialised function, where there could be no freedom because the machine could only work smoothly as long as every wheel and cog performed its task with unvarying regularity. Now the nearer modern society comes to the state of total organisation, the more difficult it is to find any place for spiritual freedom and personal responsibility. Education itself becomes an essential part of the machine, for the mind has to be as completely measured and controlled by the techniques of the scientific expert as the task which it is being trained to perform. ↗
