Underwood Dudley Quotes

Social history might be defined negatively as the history of a people with the politics left out.

The history of a nation is not in Parliaments and battlefields but in what people say to each other on fair days and high days, and in how they farm and quarrel and go on pilgrimage.

Throughout history, people have enjoyed playing both silly and clever games.

Geologists complain that when they want specimens of the common rocks of a country, they receive curious spars; just so, historians give us the extraordinary events and omit just what we want,--the every-day life of each particular time and country.

You realize that for all the shenanigans that go on in the big circus of politics, everybody wakes up and goes to work.

For long, history was mainly political history, and historical narrative was confined to an account of the most important crises in political life, or to an account of wars and great generals.

Most historians are not educated in matters of the heart and the hearth. Cannons, crowns and kings is what they focus on.

One cannot be a good historian of the outward, visible world without giving some weight to the hidden private life of ordinary people

I don't play politics.

Whenever I have free time, I usually just sleep, play games, watch movies, see my friends, have a drink. Basically, I do whatever other people do in everyday life.

The colonial period has been the proving ground in America for the new social history, which concentrates on the ordinary doings of ordinary people rather than on high culture and high politics. Unfortunately ordinary people, almost by definition, leave behind only faint traces of their existence.

Games are unnecessary obstacles we volunteer to tackle.

Deception is a developed art of civilization and the most potent weapon in the game of power

It is very wonderful to see persons of the best sense passing hours together in shuffling and dividing a pack of cards with no conversation but what is made up of a few game-phrases, and no other ideas but those of black or red spots arranged together in different figures. Would not a man laugh to hear any one of his species complaining that life is short?

There was not too much to do as a kid when we arrived in Germany. Playing basketball and listening to music gave me something to do.

Politics is a fascinating game, because politics is government. It is the art of government.

We [Americans] are game-playing, fun-loving creatures; we are the otters of the universe.

What do dogs do on their day off?; Can't lie around – that's their job!

I tend to avoid the shows that focus on politics, just to get a break from it all, i tried watching the first couple episodes of 'House of Cards,' but I thought it was way over the top. Members of Congress aren't anything like Frank Underwood. Most of us are far less interesting.

I discovered a long time ago that writing of the small things of the day, the trivial matters of the heart, the inconsequential but near things of this living, was the only kind of creative work which I could accomplish with any sincerity or grace. As a reporter, I was a flop, because I always came back laden not with facts about the case, but with a mind full of the little difficulties and amusements I had encountered in my travels.

It is wonderful to see persons of sense passing away a dozen hours together in shuffling and dividing a pack of cards.

The only game [Vladimir] Putin can play is to establish a lifelong dictatorship in the country, at first de facto and finally also de jure. In this case, [Dmitri] Medvedev is an interim figure bound to assist Putin in his plan to guarantee a smooth transition to a new term in office.

Mexico City is the center of art and culture and politics and has been and continues to be for Latin America in a way that I think really called to me as an artistic person, as someone that was interested in the politics of Latin America, you know. God, every single famous person in Latin American history and art and politics seems to have found their way to Mexico City.

Politics? Boring? Politics is history on the wing! What other sphere of human activity calls forth all that is most noble in men's souls, and all that is most base? Or has such excitement? Or more vividly exposes our strengths and weaknesses? Boring? You might as well say that life itself is boring!

It's just, it's fun to stay in the game.