#story

A Shakespearean tragedy as so far considered may be called a story of exceptional calamity leading to the death of a man in high estate. But it is clearly much more than this, and we have now to regard it from another side. ↗

— Andrew Coyle Bradley

#calamity #called #clearly #considered #death

Nothing will get you into trouble so deep or as sad as faith. ↗

— Rick Bass

#juggernaut-short-story #faith

Why do many believers insist on repeatedly pointing to the crimes of 20th century dictators who led officially atheistic societies as some sort of evidence of their god's existence? It makes no sense. If the rivers of blood on Stalin's hands and Mao's hands, for example, are supposed to prove there is a god, then what do the oceans of blood on the hands of several thousand years' worth of religious kings, queens, presidents, popes, priests, generals, Crusadersm jihadists and tribal chiefs prove? It's not, of course, but if bodycount is somehow the measure of a god's likelihood of existence, then believers lose. It is clear that humans are quite capable of killing with or without images of gods bouncing around in their heads. If anything, however, history suggests that the concept of gods makes the idea of massacring your fellow man (and women and children, too, of course) a lot easier to act upon. ↗

— Guy P. Harrison

#faith #history #religion #faith

The good historian, then, must be thus described: he must be fearless, uncorrupted, free, the friend of truth and of liberty; one who, to use the words of the comic poet, calls a fig a fig, and a skiff a skiff, neither giving nor withholding from any, from favour or from enmity, not influenced by pity, by shame, or by remorse; a just judge, so far benevolent to all as never to give more than is due to any in his work; a stranger to all, of no country, bound only by his own laws, acknowledging no sovereign, never considering what this or that man may say of him, but relating faithfully everything as it happened. ↗

— Lucian of Samosata

#history #faith

Faithfulness to the truth of history involves far more than research, however patient and scrupulous, into special facts. The narrator must seek to imbue himself with the life and spirit of the time. ↗

— Francis Parkman

#research #faith

The process of secularisation arises not from the loss of faith but from the loss of social interest in the world of faith. It begins the moment men feel that religion is irrelevant to the common way of life and that society as such has nothing to do with the truths of faith. ↗

— Christopher Henry Dawson

#faith #history #religion #secularism #faith

When you study history, you're really studying yourself. Every bit of history I've uncovered about my own family has some remnant in myself. ↗

— John Sedgwick

#history #family

A historian tries to understand what happened, why it happened, what was the context, who did what, and what assumptions led them to act as they did. A historian customarily displays a certain diffidence about trying to influence events, knowing that unanticipated developments often lead to unintended consequences. ↗

— Diane Ravitch

#history #death

We will continue to chase rainbows unless we recognize that they are rainbows and there is no pot of gold at the end of them. ↗

— Diane Ravitch

#history #education

Right time, right place, right people equals success. Wrong time, wrong place, wrong people equals most of the real human history. ↗

— Idries Shah

#history #possibility #timing #equality