#history

History isn't like that. History unravels gently, like an old sweater. It has been patched and darned many times, reknitted to suit different people, shoved in a box under the sink of censorship to be cut up for the dusters of propaganda, yet it always - eventually - manages to spring back into its old familar shape. History has a habit of changing the people who think they are changing it. History always has a few tricks up its frayed sleeve. It's been around a long time. ↗

— Terry Pratchett

#people #change

Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can’t ride you unless your back is bent. ↗

— Martin Luther King Jr.

#change

When I was in school I studied biology. I learned that in making their experiments scientists will take some group--bacteria, mice, people--and subject that group to certain conditions. They compare the results with a second group which has not been disturbed. This second group is called the control group. It is the control group which enables the scientist gauge the effect of his experiment. To judge the significance of what has occurred. In history there are no control groups. There is no one to tell us what might have been. We weep over the might have been, but there is no might have been. There never was. It is supposed to be true that those who o not know history are condemned to repeat it. I don't believe knowing can save us. What is constant in history is greed and foolishness and a love of blood and this is a thing that even God--who knows all that can be known--seems powerless to change. ↗

— Cormac McCarthy

#change

When you celebrate, there is sure to be cake." Florence Ditlow, in "The Bakery Girls. ↗

— Florence Ditlow

#food #humor #womwens-history #wwll #food

All interpretations of history are propaganda for one idea or another. ↗

— Selma Dabbagh

#politics #propaganda

[N]icht durch Reden und Majoritätsbeschlüsse werden die großen Fragen der Zeit entschiedenen [...] sondern durch Eisen und Blut. ↗

— Otto von Bismarck

#dictatorship #history #war #dictatorship

Tyranny is Tyranny, let it come from whom it may. ↗

— Howard Zinn

#united-states

Serious affairs and history are carefully laid snares for the uninformed. ↗

— Dejan Stojanovic

#books #dejan-stojanovic #history #literature #literature-quotes

One night when the moon was full, I explained to you about how the moon controls the tides, and you said I was like the moon and you were the sea, always following me about. And I said nothing, because I knew it was truly the other way around. ↗

— Sarah Bower

#history #historical-fiction

The fate of peoples is made like this, two men in small rooms. Forget the coronations, the conclaves of cardinals, the pomp and processions. This is how the world changes: a counter pushed across a table, a pen stroke that alters the force of a phrase, a woman's sigh as she passes and leaves on the air a trail of orange flower or rose water; her hand pulling close the bed curtain, the discreet sigh of flesh against flesh. ↗

— Hilary Mantel

#gestures #history #power #subtlety #tudors