#history

Religion has caused more misery to all of mankind in every stage of human history than any other single idea. ↗

— Madalyn Murray O'Hair

#caused #every #history #human #human history

How do I define history? It's just one fucking thing after another" - Rudge ↗

— Alan Bennett

#humor #humor

History has spurts and then is steady, and then maybe even backing up a step, and then forward again. ↗

— Alan Bean

#backing #even #forward #history #maybe

[R]eligion was the race's first (and worst) attempt to make sense of reality. It was the best the species could do at a time when we had no concept of physics, chemistry, biology or medicine. We did not know that we lived on a round planet, let alone that the said planet was in orbit in a minor and obscure solar system, which was also on the edge of an unimaginably vast cosmos that was exploding away from its original source of energy. We did not know that micro-organisms were so powerful and lived in our digestive systems in order to enable us to live, as well as mounting lethal attacks on us as parasites. We did not know of our close kinship with other animals. We believed that sprites, imps, demons, and djinns were hovering in the air about us. We imagined that thunder and lightning were portentous. It has taken us a long time to shrug off this heavy coat of ignorance and fear, and every time we do there are self-interested forces who want to compel us to put it back on again. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#religion #imagination

The places and people in the following stories have been represented accurately to the best of my ability; yet my writing is supposed to be a tale, and as in any historical novel, my own imagination has blended with fact to create poetical reality. ↗

— Eric Sloane

#imagination

Can you imagine the feeling of being an oppressed colonial being addressed respectfully by a colonizer in the mother country? ↗

— Ambeth R. Ocampo

#philippine-history #philippines #respect #rizal #imagination

All these years Litvinoff had imagined he was so much like his friend. He’d prided himself on what he considered their similarities. But the truth was that he was no more like the man fighting a fever in bed ten feet away than he was like the cat that had just slunk off: they were different species. ↗

— Nicole Krauss

#imagination

For historians, creative writers provide a kind of pornography. They break the rules and admit the thing that is imagined, but is not licensed to be imagined. ↗

— Hilary Mantel

#history #writing #imagination

The war which is coming Is not the first one. There were Other wars before it. When the last one came to an end There were conquerors and conquered. Among the conquered the common people Starved. Among the conquerors The common people starved too. ↗

— Bertolt Brecht

#inspirational #war #inspirational

Never lend if you need repayment; never give where you want a return. ↗

— Lindsey Davis

#inspirational #inspirational