Skip to content
Search AI Powered

Latest Stories

People Confess Which Historical Quotes Give Them The Chills

People Confess Which Historical Quotes Give Them The Chills
Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

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.

More from Trending/best-of-reddit

Elon Musk; Donald Trump
Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images; Nathan Posner/Anadolu via Getty Images

Elon Musk Shades Trump After Old Video Of Him Calling Out Government For Not Prosecuting Epstein Clients Resurfaces

On Saturday, February 21, the X account Thomas Sowell Quotes (@ThomasSowell) posted a video of platform owner Elon Musk speaking to former Fox News talking head Tucker Carlson. The post didn't include tags or hashtags.

The 43-second clip, from an over one hour interview, featured the pair laughing about the disparity between the prosecution of the violent insurrectionists who stormed the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021, versus Jeffrey Epstein's friends and clients who trafficked and sexually exploited young women and children.

Keep ReadingShow less
Gavin Newsom; U.S. women's ice hockey team celebrates victory
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images; EyesWideOpen/Getty Images

Gavin Newsom Says What We're All Thinking After Women's Hockey Team Declines Trump's State Of The Union Invite Amid Locker Room Phone Call Controversy

California Governor Gavin Newsom praised the U.S. Women’s Hockey Team after they announced they will not accept President Donald Trump’s invitation to attend his State of the Union address, coming one day after he quipped to the U.S. Men’s Hockey Team that failing to invite the women as well might get him impeached.

The development followed the Americans’ victory over Canada to claim gold in Thursday’s Olympic women’s hockey final. The U.S. Men’s Hockey Team also captured gold on Sunday with another win over Canada.

Keep ReadingShow less
Donald Trump; Screenshot from C-SPAN broadcast
Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images; C-SPAN

C-SPAN Issues Clarification After Video Goes Viral Of Man Who Sounds Like Trump Calling Into C-SPAN Under Fake Name

C-SPAN issued a clarification after a caller identifying himself as “John Barron” — a pseudonym long associated with Donald Trump — phoned into its program Washington Journal, leading some viewers to suspect the president had personally joined the broadcast.

The caller, identified as "John Barron" and described as a Republican from Virginia, drew attention for a voice that closely resembled that of Trump as he criticized what he called the Supreme Court’s “worst decision” against his emergency tariffs. The name itself raised eyebrows, since "John Barron" was a pseudonym Trump frequently used in the 1980s when speaking to reporters while posing as his own spokesman.

Keep ReadingShow less
Ninaj Minaj and President Donald Trump
Win McNamee/Getty Images

Nicki Minaj Just Posted A Pic Of Her 'Trump Bible' Signed By Donald Trump—And The Mockery Was Brutal

"Anacoda" and "Super Bass" rapper and singer Nicki Minaj has been loud and proud about her enthusiastic support of President Donald Trump, including speaking on his behalf, as well as in support of MAGA and current political movements, losing her some followers and earning her some serious side-eye.

But X users criticized her with renewed vigor when Minaj shared an image of the new, leather-bound Holy Bible she'd received that was signed by the President.

Keep ReadingShow less
Mike Lee
Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

MAGA Senator Compared ICE Agents To Mexican Cartel Hitmen In Accidentally Accurate X Post—And He Just Deleted It

Utah MAGA Republican Senator Mike Lee deleted a post he made on X about Mexican drug cartel hitmen being like Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. But it wasn't because of the racist xenophobia and Democrat bashing his post was trying to promote.

Lee deleted his latest social media blunder because too many people pointed out his comparison of cartel hitmen to MAGA Republican President Donald Trump's ICE wasn't the gotcha to "leftists" that he intended.

Keep ReadingShow less