Historical Origins Quotes

I am convinced that everything has come down to us from the banks of the Ganges, astronomy, astrology, metempsychosis, etc. It does not behoove us, who were only savages and barbarians when these Indians and Chinese peoples were civilized and learned, to dispute their antiquity.

America is so special, everybody wants to go there. And there's not a thought given to how it got special. It's just assumed it was made that way, I guess. It's just assumed that it's just there. And it's also assumed that it's always going to be there. Call it the golden goose or whatever you want but everybody saying that we have no right to keep anybody out because nobody kept us out, we all had to get here. Nobody here now actually started here. Of course, that's no longer true.

Through searching out origins, one becomes a crab. The historian looks backwards, and finally he also believes backwards.

Thanksgiving was nothing more than a pilgrim-created obstacle in the way of Christmas; a dead bird in the street that forced a brief detour.

I think I'm fascinated with history and - just in general. And I'm always interested in how did - how did this come to be? Why is this the way it is? And even singing classical voice, I quickly became more and more interested with early music, baroque voice. And that became an obsession to me - just figuring out how - who are the ancestors of whatever it is.

The usage of the words "public" and "public sphere" betrays a multiplicity of concurrent meanings. Their origins go back to various historical phases and, when applied synchronically to the conditions of a bourgeois society that is industrially advanced and constituted as a social-welfare state, they fuse into a clouded amalgam. Yet the very conditions that make the inherited language seem inappropriate appear to require these words, however confused their employment.

There is but little room for doubt that Egypt led the way in the creation of the earliest known group of civilizations which arose on both sides of the land bridge between Africa and Eurasia in the fourth millennium B.C.

We move through places every day that would never have been if not for those who came before us. Our workplaces, where we spend so much time--we often think they began with our arrival. That's not true.

But where did this veneration of childbirth come from? I missed that meeting. Childbirth is wonderful, childbirth is a miracle. Wrong. It's no more a miracle than eating food and a turd coming out your ass.

The birthplace of 'Western' civilization is generally agreed to be Greece, and its birth date is generally agreed to be some time during the 6th century B.C.E. Obviously, there is not one single dramatic moment that definitively started the whole thing.

Russian history began in Kiev, not in Moscow.

The cradles of civilization are the putrid sinks of the world.

What are the origins of dressage? Did just, one day, some young horse say to his dad, 'Dad, I don't want to charge into battle...I just wanna dance'?

American nation was not founded on political principles. This nation was founded on spiritual principles.

America is the original version of modernity. We are the dubbed or subtitled version. America ducks the question of origins; it cultivates no origin or mythical authenticity; it has no past and no founding truth. Having known no primitive accumulation of time, it lives in a perpetual present.

The infant periods of most nations are buried in silence or veiled in fable; and the world perhaps has lost but little which it needs regret. The origin and outset of the American Republic contain lessons of which posterity ought not to be deprived: and happily there never was a case in which every interesting incident could be so accurately preserved.

It is curious to reflect, for example, upon the remarkable legend of the Philosopher's Stone, one of the oldest and most universal beliefs, the origin of which, however far back we penetrate into the records of the past, we do not probably trace its real source.

I have behind me not only the splendid traditions and the annals of more than a thousand years but the living strength and majesty of the Commonwealth and Empire; of societies old and new; of lands and races different in history and origins but all, by God's Will, united in spirit and in aim.

The original home of the Aryan race appears to have been somewhere among the mountains and lofty table-lands of Central Asia. The word 'Arya,' meaning the high or the excellent, indicates their superiority over the neighboring races long before the beginning of history.

I also think that there is a huge failure in the American education system to educate Americans about where we, our system, our government, came from. And to some extent this failure is shared in places like Britain and Canada and Australia.

The standard reason for Thanksgiving doesn't mean nothing to me.

Historically speaking all - or very nearly all - scientific theories originate from myths.

It was Shakespeare's notion that on this day birds begin to couple; hence probably arose the custom of sending fancy love-billets.