The people are a story that never ends,A river that winds and falls and gleams erect in many dawns;Lost in deep gulleys, it turns to dust, rushes in the spring freshet,Emerges to the sea. The people are a story that is a long incessantComing alive from the earth in better wheat, Percherons,Babies, and engines, persistent and inevitable.The people always know that some of the grain will be good,Some of the crop will be saved, some will return andBear the strength of the kernel, that from the bloodiest yearSome survive to outfox the frost.

Понягока казва, че не мечовете на българите ни побеждават, а техните знания. - Мария Лакапина

There was some kind of scuffle two hundred yards down the street, again strangely noiseless, and a huddled knot of men opened up to reveal two brawlers being separated and pulled away from their fight. What I saw next gave me a fright: in the farther distance, beyond the listless crowd, the body of a lynched man dangling from a tree. The body was slender, dressed from head to toe in black, reflecting no light. It soon resolved itself, however, into a less ominous thing: dark canvas sheeting on a construction scaffold, twirling in the wind.

History is boring, unless you see it from the right perspective. perspective is important.Corn growing in a field appears orderless, till one turns the corner and sees the rows line up. a pixelized photo is unrecognizable, till one zooms out. All the the numbers are on a combination lock but it will not open till they are in the right sequence.So it is with history - all the names, dates and places are there, but it is not until they are seen from the right perspective that lessons become clear. history is boring, until it comes into focus.

Dari dua putraku dan tiga putriku dari Fatmawati, semuanya, kecuali Guntur, tinggal di Istana Merdeka bersamaku. Guntur tidak sedekat sebagaimana seharusnya. Dia anak ibunya. Aku tidak dapat menyalahkan dia. Karena aku juga begitu. Dia kuliah di Institut Teknologi Bandung, sama seperti ayahnya dulu, dimana dia mengambil jurusan listrik dan mata pelajaran yang sangat kusukai, perencanaan kota. Aku serahkan masa depannya pada sang nasib, dengan hanya satu doaku untuknya semoga dia tidak menjadi presiden. Itu adalah kehidupan yang sangat berat.

History deals with situations and figures not imaginary but real. It demands therefore a combination of qualities unnecessary to the poet or writer of romance - glacial judgment coupled with fervent sympathy. The poet may be an uninspired illiterate, the romance-writer an uninspired hack. Under no circumstances can either of them be accused of wrongdoing or deceiving the public, however incongruous their efforts. They write well or badly, and there the matter ends. The historian, who fails in his duty, deceives the reader and wrongs the dead.

Son, you can't go around painting yourself black, you hear?" "Why not, Papa?" "Because they'll take you away." "Why?" "Because you shouldn't want to be like black people or Jewish people or anyone who is...not us." "Who are Jewish people?" "You know my oldest customer, Mr. Kaufmann? Where we bought your shoes?" "Yes." "Well, he's Jewish." "I didn't know that. Do you have to pay to be Jewish? Do you need a license?" ..... "...you've got beautiful blond hair and big safe blue eyes. You should be happy with that; is that clear?

Logically, this kind of atheism did not prove that there was no God.... On the contrary, Southwell was typical in placing the onus probandi on those who affirmed the existence of God and Holyoake regarded himself as an atheist only in his inability to believe what the churches would have him believe. They were content to show that the Christian concept of the supernatural was meaningless, that the arguments in its favor were illogical, and that the mysteries of the universe, insofar as they were explicable, could be accounted for in material terms.

Even the simplest things had a glorious pointlessness to them. When buttons came in, about 1650, people couldn't get enough of them and arrayed them in decorative profusion on the backs and collars and sleeves of coats, where they didn't actually do anything. One relic of this is the short row of pointless buttons that are still placed on the underside of jacket sleeves near the cuff. These have been purely decorative and have never had a purpose, yet 350 years later on we continue to attach them as if they are the most earnest necessity.

Sekilas buku ini sekedar berkisah tentang bagaimna sebuah keluarga menghadapi suka-duka kehidupan sehari-hari di sebuah dusun di bagian barat Jawa Tengah. Jika kita menyimaknya dengan lebih teliti (termasuk mencermati catatan-catatan kakiyang ada), apa yang dikisahkan di dalamnya merupakan gambaran nyata mengenai bagaimana tragedi kemanusiaan tahun 1965-1966 memiliki dampak yang begitu jauh dan mendalam terhadap anak-anak bangsa yang menjadi korban langsung maupun anggota keluarga mereka… Sebuah kisah yang sangat layak untuk di simak bersama.

In the doorway of Fortnum & Mason a young couple were kissing, oblivious to the world. The neon signs mounted on the buildings cast a glossy veneer over the streetscape, glowing through the smog. Around the statue of Eros there were crowds of youngers. The girls were a mass of bobby pins and ribbons, hardly dressed for the cold weather. The boys wore suits with thin ties. They were bantering on their way from the cinemas and theatres to the bars, dance halls and music clubs further along.“I fancy you, Kitty Dawson,” a lone boy shouted.

The past is not another country; it is another life. The texture of daily living is different now than in the past, more different the further back we look, until we find people whose experiences created a psychology we might find baffling or rude. Many details that once made up the daily round are lost to us because people considered them too trivial to write down. Knowing the past means knowing what people carried in their pockets, what they did with their sewage, where their dogs slept. Those details may seem unimportant, but what they convey is not.

Sukses yang diperoleh Islam menyeluruh dan juga amat menarik perhatian. Sebagai telah kita sebut, usaha (umat islam itu) bukan hanya membuat mereka berkuasa, tetapi juga besar. Di samping memperoleh kekuasaan politik dan ekonomi dengan cepat, mereka memperoleh kemajuan baik dalam bidang kesenian maupun dalam bidang ilmu pengetahuan. Tentara mereka menang dalam pertempuran-pertempuran, perintah-peeintahnya dipatuhi, surat-surat kreditnya berharga, arsiteknya agung, sastranya menawan hati, keilmiahannya tinggi, matematikanya kuat, dan teknologinya efektif.

I neither oblige the belief of other person, nor overhastily subscribe mine own. Nor have I stood with others computing or collating years and chronologies, lest I should be vainly curious about the time and circumstance of things, whereof the substance is so much in doubt. By this time, like one who had set out on his way by night, and travelled through a region of smooth or idle dreams, our history now arrives on the confines, where daylight and truth meet us with a clear dawn, representing to our view, though at a far distance, true colours and shapes.

Like some translucen latterday Cassandra, the prophetess of doom, (Heila the Comptesse von Westarp, the former secretary of the Thule Gesellschaff) rose up from the bosom of the limp and slumbering medium (Dr. Nemirovitch-Dantchanko) to give a warning that the man who was even now preparing to assume the leadership of Thule would prove himself to be a false prophet. Assuming total power over the nation, he would be responsible one day for reducing the whole of Germany to rubble and its people to a defeat and moreal degradation hitherto unknown to history.