Historical Quotes
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If we wish to imitate the physical sciences, we must not imitate them in their contemporary, most developed form; we must imitate them in their historical youth, when their state of development was comparable to our own at the present time. Otherwise we should behave like boys who try to copy the imposing manners of full-grown men without understanding their raison d' être, also without seeing that in development one cannot jump over intermediate and preliminary phases.
Wolfgang Kohler
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Islam, the third in historical sequence of the ethical monotheistic religions of the Near East, was very successful in establishing its monotheism, but had only very moderate success in spreading its version of Jewish and Christian ethics to the Arabs.
Carroll Quigley
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It is the historical mind, rather than the scientific (in the physicist's sense), that destroyed the mythical orientation of European culture; the historian, not the mathematician, introduced the "higher criticism," the standard of actual fact. It is he who is the real apostle of the realistic age.
Susanne Langer
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What are your historical Facts still more your biographical Wilt thou know a man by stringing-together beadrolls of what thou namest Facts.
Thomas Carlyle
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The distrust and suspicion which men everywhere evidence toward their adversaries, at all states of historical development, may be regarded as the immediate precursor to the notion of ideology.
Karl Mannheim
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A modern theory of knowledge which takes account of the relational as distinct from the merely relative character of all historical knowledge must start with the assumption that there are spheres of thought in which it is impossible to conceive of absolute truth existing independently of the values and position of the subject and unrelated to the social context.
Karl Mannheim
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The historical approach to understanding of scientific fact is what differentiates the scholar in science from the mere experimenter.
Edwin Boring
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With the historical fictions, I was already doing so much research, and so much of the stories was anchored by historical truth that the move to nonfiction didn't feel all that dramatic - just another half-step to the right.
Debra Dean
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I do believe that in every age there are people whose consciousness transcends their own time and that these people, whether fictional or historical, are those with whom we most closely identify and those about whom we most enjoy reading.
Erica Jong
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Every time some new huckster of angst-ridden metaphor is appointed by Art Forum, the congregation genuflects, stroking the catalog like a handful of Rosary beads, and starts spreading that old gospel according to Hyperbole. No questions asked... And thus the bill of goods is sold, all along the line. An art historical snake, swallowing its own tale.
Abe Ajay
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What blinds us, or makes historical progress very difficult, is our lack of awareness that our beliefs have grown obsolete and should be put aside.... This is I think much of the problem of the modern dilemma: Direct experience has been discounted, and in its place all kinds of belief systems have been erected.... If you believe something, you are automatically precluded from believing its opposite; which means that a degree of your human freedom has been forfeited in the act of committing yourself to this belief.
Terence McKenna
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Like sex, poverty and power, suicide may always be with us. But like them again, the actual form is takes is essentially time-specific and culture-bound, not only in the past but in the present too. The people who took their lives, the paths which led them to that end, and the experience of dying in this way were deeply influenced by specific historical circumstances. Only by making a greater effort at historical understanding can this most secret house of death be made to yield up more of its confidences.
David Cannadine
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Since it is visual art, you know, you’re drawing from everything. But I tend to draw from what I read not from a visual thing. Most of my stuff comes from historical things that I read that are kind of obscure and that people don’t know much about, like the formation of the Christian church, stuff like that.
Barron Claiborne
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I'm interested in representation that falls outside of what would be socially appropriate, or acceptable, or beautiful. The world is going through a very fundamentalist moment. You have right-wing politics and misogyny and religion employed together everywhere - here in the US, with issues like abortion. Religion is a very fraught and complicated topic, but at the same time, like all grand historical narratives, there is a potential for challenging, or rethinking the kinds of subjectivities that these meta-narratives produce.
Chitra Ganesh
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The historical order is very interesting, but accidental and capricious; if we would to understand the growth of knowledge, we cannot be satisfied with accidents, we must explain how knowledge was gradually built up.
George Sarton
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The knife of historical relativism... which has cut to pieces all metaphysics and religion must also bring about healing.
Wilhelm Dilthey
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I suspect people would be in for a real shock if they knew the depths of his Obama's historical ignorance.
Charles Foster Johnson
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On the basis of biological, sociological, and historical knowledge, we should recognize that the individual self is subject to death or decay, but the sum total of individual achievement, for better or worse, lives on in the immortality of The Larger.
Hu Shih
