#history

Before anyone could be delivered, everybody betrayed everybody. The Jews no longer knew which current to swim, and brother turned against brother. It seems that Josephus was quick in putting all the blame on the Zealots, himself having deserted the mission. He was a turncoat, and nothing he said can be taken at face value without carefully reading between the lines. Josephus did not recognize that the same guys he cursed in failure would have been his heroes in success. But then, the failure might have come about through those who abandoned the mission—those like himself. It is the age-old question: has the freedom fighter turned terrorist, or has the terrorist turned freedom fighter? ↗

— A.J. Deus

#age

I do an awful lot of thinking and dreaming about things in the past and the future - the timelessness of the rocks and the hills - all the people who have existed there. I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape - the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn't show. ↗

— Andrew Wyeth

#history #winter #art

Today a great shot for freedom was heard. I think it stands a chance of being heard forever. It marls a turning point in the history of the Jewish people. The beginning of the return to a statues of dignity we have not known for two thousand years. Yes, today was the first step back. My battle is done. Now I turn the command over to the soldiers. ↗

— Leon Uris

#bravery #courage #defiance #freedom #ghetto

Because subjects like literature and art history have no obvious material pay-off, they tend to attract those who look askance at capitalist notions of utility. The idea of doing something purely for the delight of it has always rattled the grey-bearded guardians of the state. Sheer pointlessness has always been a deeply subversive affair. ↗

— Terry Eagleton

#capitalist #literature #state #subversive #art

When Lincoln was asked if God was on the Union’s side, Lincoln’s unvarying response was that what was really important was whether they were on God’s side. ↗

— Joe L. Wheeler

#faith #god #history #courage

Submitting to history allows us to remember our society’s past. Although writing and art express history, it's our humanity which keeps all of us striving for an improved future. ↗

— K.P. Kollenborn

#history-of-mankind #humanity #writing-from-the-heart #art

The hare of history once more overtakes the tortoise of art. ↗

— Kurt Vonnegut

#history #art

Just as no monkey is as good-looking as the ugliest of humans, no academic is worthier than the worst of the creators ↗

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

#academics #art #art-history #artists #arts

An artist is the magician put among men to gratify--capriciously--their urge for immortality. The temples are built and brought down around him, continuously and contiguously, from Troy to the fields of Flanders. If there is any meaning in any of it, it is in what survives as art, yes even in the celebration of tyrants, yes even in the celebration of nonentities. What now of the Trojan War if it had been passed over by the artist's touch? Dust. A forgotten expedition prompted by Greek merchants looking for new markets. A minor redistribution of broken pots. But it is we who stand enriched, by a tale of heroes, of a golden apple, a wooden horse, a face that launched a thousand ships--and above all, of Ulysses, the wanderer, the most human, the most complete of all heroes--husband, father, son, lover, farmer, soldier, pacifist, politician, inventor and adventurer... ↗

— Tom Stoppard

#history #literature #art

[I]f we revert to history, we shall find that the women who have distinguished themselves have neither been the most beautiful nor the most gentle of their sex. ↗

— Mary Wollstonecraft

#beauty #clichés #distinction #empowerment #gender