February 2012
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“The presidency has made every man who occupied it, no matter how small, bigger than he was; and no matter how big, not big enough for its demands.”
Lyndon B. Johnson
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“It is better to be alone than in bad company.”
George Washington
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“If you don’t know history, it’s as if you were born yesterday. If you were born yesterday, then any leader can tell you anything.”
Howard Zinn - 2008
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“Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realise that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events. Antiquated War Offices, weak, incompetent, or...
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“History is not like some individual person, which uses men to achieve its ends. History is nothing but the actions of men in pursuit of their ends.”
Karl Marx - 1845
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WatchStephen Colbert - The Word: American History X’d
From: www.colbertnation.com
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January 2012
20 posts
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“Everybody likes a bit of gossip to some point, as long as it’s gossip with some point to it. That’s why I like history. History is nothing but gossip about the past, with the hope that it might be true.”
Gore Vidal - 2007
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“History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of “history” it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time — and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened.”
Hunter S. Thompson...
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“The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty.”
Woodrow Wilson - 1917
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“Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.”
Winston Churchill - The Story of the Malakand Field Force: An Episode of Frontier War (1898)
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“Nothing is easier than to falsify the past. Lifeless instruction will do it. If you rob it of vitality, stiffen it with pedantry, sophisticate it with argument, chill it with unsympathetic comment, you render it as dead as any academic exercise. The safest way in all ordinary seasons is to let it speak for itself: resort to its records, listen to its poets and to its masters in the humbler...
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Neville Chamberlain
Neville Chamberlain was a conservative English politician who served as Prime Minister of the U.K. for three years between 1937 to 1940. His time as Prime Minister was tarnished by appeasement and abandoning the Sudetenland over to Nazi Germany. Chamberlain had hoped that appeasing Hitler would make him easier to deal with and avoid a war. Unfortunately for Chamberlain, World War Two still broke...
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“I wonder whether any other generation has seen such astounding revolutions of data and values as those through which we have lived. Scarcely anything material or established which I was brought up to believe was permanent and vital, has lasted. Everything I was sure or taught to be sure was impossible, has happened.”
Winston Churchill - My Early Life: A Roving Commission (1930)
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December 2011
19 posts
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“Europe was created by history. America was created by philosophy.”
Margaret Thatcher
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“Friends have asked how I came to engender this American antagonism. My prodigious sin was, and still is, being a non-conformist. Although I am not a Communist I refused to fall in line by hating them. Secondly, I was opposed to the Committee on Un-American Activities — a dishonest phrase to begin with, elastic enough to wrap around the throat and strangle the voice of any American citizen...
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“Men make history and not the other way around. In periods where there is no leadership, society stands still. Progress occurs when courageous, skillful leaders seize the opportunity to change things for the better.”
Harry Truman
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The Katyn Massacre
The Katyn Massacre was a mass execution of Polish people carried out by Soviet secret police in April and May of 1940. Around 22,000 Poles were murdered, including Polish officers who had been taken prisoner during the Soviet invasion of 1939, police officers and Polish intelligentsia. The massacre of Poles was carried out at several Russian prisoner of war camps, the biggest taking place near...
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“What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.”
Christopher Hitchens
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“Anyone who knows anything of history knows that great social changes are impossible without feminine upheaval. Social progress can be measured exactly by the social position of the fair sex, the ugly ones included.” Karl Marx
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“Skepticism is a virtue in history as well as in philosophy.”
Napoleon Bonaparte