#history

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

We are doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past, and no amount of education gleaned from our propensity for self-destruction and misguided thinking ever teaches us anything. Not anything that we remember for more than a generation or two. I think maybe we learn a few things each time that we don't forget. A few things that stick with us. It's just hard to pass those things on to those who come after us because if they didn't live through it, they don't view it the same way we do. If you don't experience something firsthand, it's a lot harder to accept. Terry Brooks, Bearers of the Black Staff, p 89 ↗

— Terry Brooks

#education

Call no man happy until he is dead. ↗

— Solon

#happiness #history #philosophy #the-good-life #life

And in the absence of facts, myth rushes in, the kudzu of history. ↗

— Stacy Schiff

#facts-and-ideas #history #myth #life

We do not want to comprehend that people may and do die of emotional pain, or to recognize the terror in ourselves when we cannot seem to help someone in despair -- when our words are empty. ↗

— Jill Bialosky

#jill-bialosky #page- #life

The best of humanity's recorded history is a creative balance between horrors endured and victories achieved, and so it was during the Harlem Renaissance. ↗

— Aberjhani

#creativity #harlem-renaissance #history #horror #humanity

Our ability to look back on the past, our need or desire to make sense of it, is both a blessing and a curse; and our inability to see into the future with any degree of accuracy is, simultaneously, the thing that saves us and the thing that condemns us. ↗

— James Robertson

#history #insight #life #mankind #past

The common man wants nothing of life but health, longevity, amusement, comfort -- "happiness." He who does not despise this should turn his eyes from world history, for it contains nothing of the sort. The best that history has created is great suffering. ↗

— Oswald Spengler

#history #struggle #suffering #life