History is littered with horror and fright.
And much of it is journaled and cataloged for our reading pleasure.
Which sometimes is reading that can leave one a bit on edge.
That's because some of our best long-dead wordsmiths left some serious echoes.
Now we all do love a good speech.
We're especially entranced when the speaker has that certain... "thing."
But once and awhile when you listen and really dig deep, they are less inspirational and more morbid
Redditor KeyWar8755 wanted to compare notes on the words we can't shake. They asked:
"What’s a quote from history that gives you chills?"
I always listen to famous serial killers. So I've long been tainted.
To the Sea
Season 3 Nbc GIF by ManifestGiphy"'It is only those who have never heard a shot, never heard the shriek and groans of the wounded and lacerated […] that cry aloud for more blood, more vengeance, more desolation.'"
"General Sherman, from a letter sent in May of 1865 in the midst of his march to the sea."
TTTriplicate
Loss in Life
“'WAR is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.'― Smedley Butler"
ayayaJAMMER
Shoot
"'Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.' -- Dwight D. Eisenhower"
zyygh
Dirty
"'In Germany, the one who complains about the dirt is considered much more dangerous than the one making something dirty.' -Kurt Tucholsky"
"(Not an exact translation, the original quote is in German)"
EsszettOfficial
I'll Find You
looney tunes marco GIF by Looney Tunes World of MayhemGiphy"Nobody believed Marco Polo’s stories about travelling through Asia, and on his deathbed someone asked him to admit he had made it all up. His response was 'I have not told half of what I have seen.' That always got my imagination going. I would have liked to have heard his stories straight from him."
mariam67
I've always wondered about Marco Polo's origins.
Dreams
Hungry Hanna Barbera GIF by Warner ArchiveGiphy“'All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible.' T. E. Lawrence"
Kravashera
Time to Die
"'I've seen things you people wouldn't believe... Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion... I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain... Time to die.' — Rutger Hauer in Blade Runner"
cisforcoffee
Send it All...
"'Stop sending people to kill me. We've already captured five of them, one of them with a bomb and another with a rifle… If you don't stop sending killers, I'll send one to Moscow, and I won't have to send another.' - Said by Josip Broz Tito to Joseph Stalin"
ChangKaiShek2
Death
“'I used to have five brothers, now I'm not even a brother' - Kevin Von Erich"
"His older brother died at the age of 6. His younger brother David died suddenly at 25. His three youngest brothers all killed themselves at 33, 23, and 21. Between 1984 and 1993 he went from having four younger brothers to not being a brother."
ToxicBanana69
Remember
Martin Luther King Jr Mlk GIF by IdentityGiphy"'We will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.' - Martin Luther King, Jr."
RecalledBurger
Power
"'We have the power to make this the best generation of mankind in the history of the world or make it the last.' - John F. Kennedy"
VerdHorizon
Hard Truth
"'There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.' --Vladimir Ilyich Lenin"
thatsnotmyf**kinname
"Whew! The timing."
imheretoupvotes**t
"Seen too many once in a generation depressions and once in a hundred years extreme weather events."
Meritania
Pay Attention
"'A generation which ignores history has no past and no future.' Robert Heinlein"
underpressure65
"Here in Latin America we have a similar saying: 'Un pueblo sin memoria es un pueblo sin futuro.' Which means 'A nation without memories is a nation without a future.'"
Guilhermedidi
NOW!
gordon ramsay fox GIF by MasterChef JuniorGiphy"'They didn't want it good, they wanted it Wednesday.' -Robert Heinlein"
Hob_O_Rarison
"Damn. I work in manufacturing and this hit me right in the paycheck."
XXPapaZombieXX
Take Notice
"'Why show anger to the world, as if the world would notice.'"
Wehfi
"I like this. Who said it?"
-Saltyz
"It's a double quotation. It's best known today as a quotation from the Meditations by Stoic philosopher and Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, but he was himself quoting from the Greek play Bellerophon by Euripedes."
contramundi
Bull Moose
"'Friends, I shall ask you to be as quiet as possible. I don't know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot; but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose. But fortunately I had my manuscript, so you see I was going to make a long speech, and there is a bullet - there is where the bullet went through - and it probably saved me from it going into my heart. The bullet is in me now, so that I cannot make a very long speech, but I will try my best.' -Teddy Roosevelt"
herculesmeowlligan
Pay Up
“'It will cost what it will.' - Albert von Bredow"
"After receiving orders to charge the French infantry. Would become one of the last successful cavalry charges used in battle. More than half of them died in the charge."
KingOfWinteryIce
DONE
Proud Ides Of March GIF by Checkatrade.comGiphy"'The die is cast - Ceasar'"
"He said that after sending Roman troops to the border of Italy and Callia which marked the beginning of a Civil War."
Lanxol
Franz
“'One day the Great European War will come out of some damn foolish thing in the Balkans.' - Otto Von Bismarck"
"Said in 1888, 26 years before Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo triggering World War One."
Superb-Possibility-9
These are some powerful words that have stood the test of time.
