#history

Those of us who write and study history are accustomed to its approximations and ambiguities. This is why we do not take literally the tenth-hand reports of frightened and illiterate peasants who claim to have seen miracles or to have had encounters with messiahs and prophets and redeemers who were, like them, mere humans. And this is also why we will never submit to dictation from those who display a fanatical belief in certainty and revelation. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#history #religion #religion

Physics advances by accepting absurdities. Its history is one of unbelievable ideas proving to be true. ↗

— Rivka Galchen

#ideas #physics #science #truth #unbelievable

It is your duty,' he said, 'to recover your country not by gold but by the sword. You will be fighting with all you love before your eyes: the temples of the gods, your wives and children, the soil of your native land scarred with the ravages of war, and everything which honor and truth call upon you to defend, or recover, or avenge. ↗

— Livy

#political-philosophy #political-science #speeches #war #love

Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists. ↗

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

#history #immigration #politics #revolution #united-states

Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all. ↗

— Adam Smith

#democracy #freedom #history #hope #individualism

There are only patterns, patterns on top of patterns, patterns that affect other patterns. Patterns hidden by patterns. Patterns within patterns. If you watch close, history does nothing but repeat itself. What we call chaos is just patterns we haven't recognized. What we call random is just patterns we can't decipher. what we can't understand we call nonsense. What we can't read we call gibberish. There is no free will. There are no variables. ↗

— Chuck Palahniuk

#history #history-repeating-itself #patterns #free

It frustrates and fascinates me that we'll never know for sure, that despite the best efforts of historians and scientists and poets, there are some things we'll just never know. What the first song sounded like. How it felt to see the first photograph. Who kissed the first kiss, and if it was any good. ↗

— Isaac Marion

#the-unknowable #effort

Ideology is the science of idiots. ↗

— John Adams

#john-adams #politics #science

Your pretty empire took so long to build, now, with a snap of history's fingers, down it goes. ↗

— Alan Moore

#history #anarchism

Although I am an anarch, I am not anti-authoritarian. Quite the opposite: I need authority, although I do not believe in it. My critical faculties are sharpened by the absence of the credibility that I ask for. As a historian, I know what can be offered. ↗

— Ernst Jünger

#anarchy #authority #ernst-jünger #history #anarchism