#history

The worse the coming future, the more it should motivate its opponents. ↗

— Leonard Peikoff

#philosophy #motivational

In 1914, Franz Ferdinand, the Austrian imperial heir, was shot and killed by a Serbian nationalist in Sarajevo. Do you know the motive behind the act? It was in retaliation for the subjugation of the Sebs in Austria. It was not.Franz Ferdinand had stated his intention to introduce reforms favorable to the Serbs in his empire. Had he survived to ascend the throne, he would have made a revolution unnecessary. In plain terms, he was killed because he was going to give the rebels what they were shouting for. They needed a despot in the palace in order to seize it. What's good for reform is bad for the reformers ↗

— Loren D. Estleman

#history #reform #sarajevo #world-war-i #motivational

It follows that the one thing we should not do to the men and women of past time, and particularly if they ghost through to us as larger than life, is to take them out of their historical contexts. To do so is to run the risk of turning them into monsters, whom we can denounce for our (frequently political) motives—an insidious game, because we are condemning in their make-up that which is likely to belong to a whole social world, the world that helped to fashion them and that is deviously reflected or distorted in them. Censure of this sort is the work of petty moralists and propagandists, not historians (p. 5). ↗

— Lauro Martines

#context #historians #history #memory #moralists

There were three things sought by invaders who crossed oceans to discover America. Those were gold, gospel, glory. There are four things sought by aliens who crossed heavens to discover planet earth. Those are gold, gospel, glory, gene. ↗

— Toba Beta

#future #gene #genetics #glory #gold

You will be most readily cured of vanity or presumption by studying the history of music, and by hearing the master pieces which have been produced at different periods. ↗

— Robert Schumann

#history #music #vanity #music

Pike spawn in February, March, and April because they cannot wait until May. ↗

— Will Cuppy

#humor #natural-history #nature

Sound is the most absorbent medium of all, soaking up histories and philosophical systems and physical surroundings and encoding them in something so slight as a single vocal quaver or icy harpsichord interjection. ↗

— Geoffrey O'Brien

#sound #music

It was a cruel world though. More than half of all children died before they could reach maturity, thanks to chronic epidemics and malnutrition. People dropped like flies from polio and tuberculosis and smallpox and measles. There probably weren't many people who lived past forty. Women bore so many children, they became toothless old hags by the time they were in their thirties. People often had to resort to violence to survive. Tiny children were forced to do such heavy labor that their bones became deformed, and little girls were forced to become prostitutes on a daily basis. Little boys too, I suspect. Most people led minimal lives in worlds that had nothing to do with richness of perception or spirit. City streets were full of cripples and beggars and criminals. Only a small fraction of the population could gaze at the moon with deep feeling or enjoy a Shakespeare play or listen to the beautiful music of Dowland. ↗

— Haruki Murakami

#dowager #history #beauty

Legendary innovators like Franklin, Snow, and Darwin all possess some common intellectual qualities—a certain quickness of mind, unbounded curiosity—but they also share one other defining attribute. They have a lot of hobbies. ↗

— Steven Johnson

#hobbies #innovation #self-improvement #nature

The very names we use to describe ancient ideas or vanished forms of social organization would be quite meaningless if we had not known living men. ↗

— Marc Bloch

#men