History is filled with a myriad of fascinating (and/or disturbing) events that resulted in quotes that reverberate across the years to this very day.
Some of these quotations have survived for as long as centuries, emanating from all corners of the Earth, and offering sobering perspectives that reflect the eras they originated in, personal experiences, or misguided ideologies.
To offer insight into the past and a range of human experience, here are 12 haunting quotes from history that will send chills down your spine.
To offer insight into the past and a range of human experience, here are 12 haunting quotes from history that will send chills down your spine.
9. Emily Dickinson
“I must go in, for the fog is rising.” Dickinson was an American poet who died in 1886, ever an artist to the very end these are the mysterious words she uttered on her death bed. Photo: Original photographer unknown via Wikimedia Commons
10. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk
"Men, I am not ordering you to attack. I am ordering you to die." Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, in command to the 57th Infantry Regiment at the Battle of Gallipoli, gave this order in 1915. Photo: Unknown author via Wikimedia Commons
11. Sparta
"If." This was the response given to Philip II of Macedon (346–336 BC) after his message to Sparta which said "If I invade Lakonia you will be destroyed, never to rise again." Philip would later invade and devastate Lakonia, "ejecting" many Spartans from the area. Photo: Jean-Jacques-François Le Barbier via Wikimedia Commons
12. William Tecumseh Sherman
"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." These were the words of Sherman, a General in the Union Army during the American Civil War, from a letter sent in 1865. Photo: Mathew Benjamin Brady via Wikimedia Commons