history

History is not the past _ it is the method we have evolved of organising our ignorance of the past

Indeed, if these final decades of the millennium have taught us anything, it must be that oral tradition never was the __ther_ we accused it of being; it never was the primitive, preliminary technology of communication we thought it had to be. Rather, if the whole truth is told, oral tradition stands out as the single most dominant communicative technology of our species, as both a historical fact and, in many areas still, a contemporary reality. The miracle of the flat inscribable surface and Gutenberg__ genius aside, even the electronic revolution cannot challenge the long-term preeminence of the oral tradition. ("Introduction" by John Foley)

In the future, Martin will recall this night as the first time -- and one of the only times -- he ever saw Germans crying in public, not at the news of a dead loved one or at the sight of their bombed home, and not in physical pain, but from spontaneous emotion. For this brief time, they were not hiding from one another, wearing their masks of cold and practical detachment. The music stirred the hardened sediment of their memory, chafed against layers of horror and shame, and offered a rare solace in their shared anger, grief and guilt.

I know that imprisonment will be harder for me than it has ever been for anyone, filled with cowardly threats and hideous cruelty. But I do not fear prison, as I do not fear the fury of the miserable tyrant who took the lives of 70 of my comrades. Condemn me. It does not matter. History will absolve me.

The government, which was designed for the people, has got into the hands of the bosses and their employers, the special interests. An invisible empire has been set up above the forms of democracy._ Woodrow Wilson, twenty-eighth President of the United States of America. Served 1913_1921. President during World War I, only President to be interred within Washington, DC, at the National Cathedral.

I will lay it out in black and white, and my tale will contain more truth than the great dead histories on my father's bookshelves. For they say what happened, but not what it was like. They say what happened, but they do not say why.

It is an affront to our present, and it is a bad prescription for our future. History cannot be changed. It cannot be moved like a statue. What is done is done.

There is no history of mankind, there is only an indefinite number of histories of all kinds of aspects of human life. And one of these is the history of political power. This is elevated into the history of the world. But this, I hold, is an offence against every decent conception of mankind. It is hardly better than to treat the history of embezzlement or of robbery or of poisoning as the history of mankind. For the history of power politics is nothing but the history of international crime and mass murder.

This melodrama differed from others in that it was not written, it was to be played impromptu, and only once; after that it would be precedent, and would determine the destinies of mankind perhaps for centuries. Each of the actors hoped to write it his way, and no living man could say what the dénouement would be.

Here we find the roots of American wealth and democracy__n the for-profit destruction of the most important asset available to any people, the family. The destruction was not incidental to America__ rise; it facilitated that rise. By erecting a slave society, America created the economic foundation for its great experiment in democracy.

Every age has its darkness....

A religion deeply rooted in theology, is never above skepticism hinged upon the twin pillars; of reason & facts.

Comrades, we are going to try to cheer you up, and our sense of humor will help us in this endeavor, although the phrase gallows humor has never seemed so logical and appropriate. The external circumstances are exactly in our favor. We need only to take a look at the barbed wire fences, so high and full of electricity. Just like your expectations.And then there are the watchtowers that monitor our every move. The guards have machine guns. But machine guns won__ intimidate us, comrades. They just have barrels of guns, whereas we are going to have barrels of laughs.You may be surprised at how upbeat and cheerful we are. Well, comrades, there are goods reasons for this. It__ been a long time since we were in Berlin. But every time we appeared there, we felt very uneasy. We were afraid we__ get sent to the concentration camps. Now that fear is gone. We__e already here.

. Despite the considerable horror they had felt when the SA men were bellowing crude anti-Semitic slogans, in retrospect the joke-tellers were very much aware of the boycott__ inherent absurdity:A city on the Rhine during the boycott: SA men stand in front of Jewish businesses and __arn_ passers-by against entering them. Nonetheless, a woman tries to go into a knitting shop.An SA man stops her and says, __ey, you. Stay outside. That__ a Jewish shop!___o?_ replies the woman. ____ Jewish myself.__he SA man pushes her back. __nyone can say that!

One UniVerse for the LivingWhile palaces attest to the power of men,And monuments mark their wars,Little remains of the women who've been- Except for the sons that they bore.But the voices of women were baked into breadAnd later buttered with epicsWhile the souls of their daughtersStitched with fine threadBecame tapestries stored in attics.And all through the agesMen boasted like beastsErecting pillars of marble and stone,But still they found themselves only to beSculpted of flesh and bone.Philosophers pondered the nature of godsOutlawing temptations that plagued themAnd earning themselves, against all odds,The power to punish the pagans.By writing themselves into sacred booksThe clergymen sealed our fateTo follow decrees that have their rootsIn nothing but misguided hate.So, children of Adam and invisible Eve,challenge the wisdom of sages. Don__ be so sure sacred scrolls that you readAren't filled with human pages.Walk in the wilderness.Eat of the fruit. Don't let them buy you with wages.Plant your own garden.Drink of the wine.Learn how to be courageous.Hearts that are hardenedTo what is divineHave honored the dead too long.Search for the storiesBaked into breadAnd eat until you are strong.

Thank you, sir. But, uh, can you tell me where the First New York Regiment is?

Historical periodization always tells a story. It is a narrative device for putting meaning into the flux of historical process - creating protagonists, heroes, pace, and plot. For this reason, the division of history into periods always carries an ideological load, and it is a methodological imperative to approach questions of broad historical periodization with this in mind.

The day history will die and lose its essence with time, memories will not only die, but they shall also surely be forgotten with time!