The best history is but like the art of Rembrandt it casts a vivid light on certain selected causes on those which were best and greatest it leaves all the rest in shadow and unseen.

The past always seems somehow more golden more serious than the present. We tend to forget the partisanship of yesteryear preferring to re-imagine our history as a sure and steady march toward greatness.

With the perspective afforded by the passage of time where does 9/11 rank as a turning point in our national history? For the victims and their families innocents going about their lives suddenly and brutally murdered no other day can ever matter as much.

World War II ended the Great Depression with one of the great public-private industrial collaborations in the history of man.

From Jefferson to Jackson to Lincoln to FDR to Reagan every great president inspires enormous affection and enormous hostility. We'll all be much saner I think if we remember that history is full of surprises and things that seemed absolutely certain one day are often unimaginable the next.

Part of what I loved - and love - about being around older people is the tangible sense of history they embody. I'm interested in military history for instance because both my grandfathers fought in World War II. I'm interested in writing because one of those grandfathers wrote books.

The middle class one of the great achievements in history is becoming more of a relic than a reality.

There's always a part of your nation's history that you haven't been told that... has a powerful impact on how you yourself may behave and may believe.

The upward course of a nation's history is due in the long run to the soundness of heart of its average men and women.

I think it was my study of history that convinced me that the Democratic Party was more on the side of the average American.

For at the same time many people seem eager to extend the circle of our moral consideration to animals in our factory farms and laboratories we are inflicting more suffering on more animals than at any time in history.

I'm trying to make a case for those people who don't have a sense of belonging that they should have that there is something really worthwhile in having a sense of belonging and recasting and looking at our modern history.

What is the thread of western civilization that distinguished its course in history? It has to do with the preoccupation of western man with his outward command and his sense of superiority.

Western history has been a history of deed done actions performed and results achieved.

Hip-hop's always reached out to kids. If you look at the last 10 big albums it might seem ironic. But when I look at the history of this music it's always had a lot of positivity.

Let me tell you never before in the history of this planet has anybody made the progress that African-Americans have made in a 30-year period in spite of many black folks and white folks lying to one another.

After Nixon resigned in 1974 he engaged in a very aggressive war with history attempting to wipe out the Watergate stain and memory. Happily history won largely because of Nixon's tapes.

Governments that use violence to stop democratic development will not earn themselves respite forever. They will pay an increasingly high price for actions which they can no longer hide from the world with ease and will find themselves on the wrong side of history.

I don't think that there's been one example in history where somebody has openly talked about their personal life and it's done them any good.

Culinary tradition is not always based on fact. Sometimes it's based on history on habits that come out of a time when kitchens were fueled by charcoal.

Since the dawn of time traditional marriage - the union between one man and one woman - has been the building block of civilization and at no point in our nation's history has that foundation been under more severe attack than now.

You don't hate history you hate the way it was taught to you in high school.

If you take a look at history you will find that the understanding of what is good and evil has always existed before the individual religions. The religions were only invented by people afterwards in order to express this idea.

Horror is the natural reaction to the last 5 000 years of history.