This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Construed as a means instead of an end, history is the weapon with which we defend the future against the past.
Livy, formally Titus Livius, aka Titus Livy NULL
The study of history is the best medicine for a sick mind; for in history you have a record of the infinite variety of human experience plainly set out for all to see: and in that record you can find for yourself and your country both examples and warnings: fine things to take as models, base things, rotten through and through, to avoid.
Experience | History | Study |
We learn history not in order to know how to behave or how to succeed, but to know who we are.
John Dalberg-Acton, Lord Acton, fully John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton
Where you have a concentration of power in a few hands, all too frequently men with the mentality of gangsters get control. History has proven that.
In the history of mankind, fanaticism has caused more harm than vice.
Fanaticism | Harm | History |
Louis L'Amour, fully Louis Dearborn L'Amour
It is often said that one has but one life to live, but that is nonsense. For one who reads, there is no limit to the number of lives that may be lived, for fiction, biography and history offer an inexhaustible number of lives in many parts of the world, in all periods of time.
Adolescence is the time to enlarge the natural sentiments of pity, friendship, and generosity, the time to develop an understanding of human nature and the varieties of human character, the time to gain insight into the strengths and weaknesses of all men and to study the history of mankind.
History | Human nature | Insight | Men | Nature | Study | Time | Understanding |
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton
There are two lives to each of us, the life of our actions, and the life of our minds and hearts. History reveals men's deeds and their outward characters, but not themselves. There is a secret self that has its own life, unpenetrated and unguessed.
Ludwig von Mises, fully Ludwig Heinrich Edler von Mises
The essential characteristic of Western civilization that distinguishes it from the arrested and petrified civilizations of the East was and is its concern for freedom from the state. The history of the West, from the age of the Greek polis down to the present-day resistance to socialism, is essentially the history of the fight for liberty against the encroachments of the officeholders.
Age | Civilization | Freedom | History | Liberty |
Ludwig von Mises, fully Ludwig Heinrich Edler von Mises
The history of mankind is the history of ideas. For it is ideas, theories, and doctrines that guide human action, determine the ultimate ends men aim at, and the choice of the means employed for the attainment of these ends.
Attainment | Choice | Ends | History | Mankind | Means | Men |
Ludwig von Mises, fully Ludwig Heinrich Edler von Mises
If history could teach us anything, it would be that private property is inextricably linked with civilization.
Ludwig Feuerbach, fully Ludwig Andreas von Feuerbach
But like the desire for eternal life, the desire for omniscience and absolute perfection is merely an imaginary desire; and, as history and daily experience prove, the supposed human striving for unlimited knowledge and perfection is a myth. Man has no desire to know everything; he only wants to know the things to which he is particularly drawn.
Absolute | Desire | Eternal | Experience | History | Knowledge | Man | Omniscience | Perfection | Wants |
M. Scott Peck, fully Morgan Scott Peck
The whole course of human history may depend on a change of heart in one solitary and even humble individual - for it is in the solitary mind and soul of the individual that the battle between good and evil is waged and ultimately won or lost.
Battle | Change | Evil | Good | Heart | History | Individual | Mind | Soul |
Mao Tse-tung, alternatively Zedong, Ze dong, aka Chairman Mao
No political party can possibly lead a great revolutionary movement to victory unless it possesses revolutionary theory and knowledge of history and has a profound grasp of the practical movement.
Mao Tse-tung, alternatively Zedong, Ze dong, aka Chairman Mao
Classes struggle, some classes triumph, others are eliminated. Such is history; such is the history of civilization for thousands of years. To interpret history from this viewpoint is historical materialism; standing in opposition to this viewpoint is historical idealism.
Civilization | History | Opposition |
Never was there a time, in the history of the world, when moral heroes were more needed. The world waits for such, the providence of God has commanded science to labor and prepare the way for such. For them she is laying her iron tracks, and stretching her wires and bridging the oceans. But where are they? Who shall breathe into our civil and political relations the breath of a higher life? Who shall touch the eyes of a paganized science, and of a pantheistic philosophy, that they may see God? Who shall consecrate to the glory of God the triumphs of science? Who shall bear the life-boat to the stranded and perishing nations.
Glory | God | History | Labor | Providence | Science | World | God |