History Topics

Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon than the Word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind.
—Thomas Paine (1737–1809)

history is more or less bunk. It’s tradition. We don’t want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker’s damn is the history we make today.
—Henry Ford (1863–1947)

In our first year with children we cross from adulthood to parenthood. . . . We share a history with our children, come to know our partner also as a parent, see how our society really treats families. Maybe more important, we get some handle on who we are as parents—different from our parents, from common stereotypes of fathers and mothers, from peers who were parents before us. Our parenthood is not at all finished—it’s fragile, a “work in progress”Mbut it’s much more than we had before.
—Joan Sheingold Ditzion and Dennie Palmer (20th century)