Quotes by John Thorn - Page 1 | QuoteForever

A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
X
Y
Z

Life is more about losing than winning.
John Thorn / Historian
Life Is
Losing
Winning
Copy Quote
We play because we are wired for joy; it is imperative as human beings.
John Thorn / Historian
Humans
Joy
Play
Copy Quote
There was much woe and lamentation in the seventies that the game was dying.
John Thorn / Historian
Dying
Lamentation
Seventies
Woe
Game
Copy Quote
Distant replay morphs into instant replay, and future replay cannot be far off.
John Thorn / Historian
Instant
Instant Replay
Replay
Distant
Copy Quote
In over 160 years of recorded baseball history, no team had ever won a championship this way.
John Thorn / Historian
Baseball
Baseball History
Championship
Team
Years
Won
Copy Quote
Whatever else I do before finally I go to my grave, I hope it will not be looking after young people.
John Thorn / Historian
Graves
People
Young
Hope People Will
Finally
Grave
Young People
Copy Quote
The National League was born the following year, as an attempt to exert the control of capital over labor.
John Thorn / Historian
Following
Labor
Attempt
Capital
Exert
Copy Quote
This illuminates not only fans' interest in major league teams but also the minors and even Little League.
John Thorn / Historian
League
Little League
Major League
Illuminates
Major
Teams
Copy Quote
If I haven't made myself clear, this worrisome chain of events describes the game of the nineteenth century.
John Thorn / Historian
Clear
Events
Games
Nineteenth Century
Ties
Chain
Nineteenth
Worrisome
Copy Quote
This was nostalgia in the literal Greek sense: the pain of not being able to return to one's home and family.
John Thorn / Historian
Home
Greek
Literal
Nostalgia
Pain
Return
Copy Quote
The heroes of our youth grow old - 'the boys of summer in their ruin', in Dylan Thomas's verse - yet we seem the same.
John Thorn / Historian
Dylan
Summer
Youth
Heroes
Boy
Grow
Same
Old
Ruin
Seem
Thomas
Verse
Copy Quote
The heroes of our youth grow old - 'the boys of summer in their ruin,' in Dylan Thomas's verse - yet we seem the same.
John Thorn / Historian
Boys
Hero
Summer
Copy Quote
I am opposed, naturally, to regurgitating anecdote or any other form of received wisdom, unless it is characterized as such.
John Thorn / Historian
Anecdotes
Form
Copy Quote
I'd just like to see - in writing about baseball - more energy and better craft, minus statistical bludgeoning and invective.
John Thorn / Historian
Baseball
Energy
Writing
Copy Quote
Keep score, which is what the Talmud recognizes as a distinction between work and play that renders a game unfit for the Sabbath.
John Thorn / Historian
Games
Play
Score
Copy Quote
Finally, for all of us but a lucky few, the dream of playing big-time baseball is relinquished so we can get on with grown-up things.
John Thorn / Historian
Dream
Baseball
Lucky
Finally
Grown-Up
Relinquished
Copy Quote
Although the world proved not yet ready for the brotherhood of baseball, that would be only a matter of time, baseball magnates believed.
John Thorn / Historian
Baseball
Brotherhood
Would Be
Copy Quote
Donning a glove for a backyard toss, or watching a ball game, or just reflecting upon our baseball days, we are players again, forever young.
John Thorn / Historian
Baseball
Forever
Games
Player
Reflecting
Toss
Backyard
Ball
Ball Game
Glove
Copy Quote
Baseball presents a living heritage, a game poised between the powerful undertow of seasons past and the hope of next day, next week, next year.
John Thorn / Historian
Baseball
Heritage
Next Year
Past
Powerful
Seasons
Poised
Presents
Copy Quote
Except in expert hands, stats can get in the way of story; an array of data that might better be presented in a table instead clogs up sentences.
John Thorn / Historian
Data
Experts
Hands
Copy Quote
Just because I am increasingly bored by sabermetric arcana doesn't mean anyone else has to be; it remains good for people who like that sort of thing.
John Thorn / Historian
Bored
Mean
People
Copy Quote
In response to the challenge of strangers, sport arose as a sublimated representation of a community's armed might as well as its pride of place and clan.
John Thorn / Historian
Sports
Community
Pride
Representation
Response
Armed
Challenge
Clan
Sport
Strangers
Copy Quote
The caliber of play suffered and attendance declined year by year. Interest in college football was exploding, and there was this new game called basketball.
John Thorn / Historian
Inspirational
Attendance
Basketball
Caliber
College Football
Exploding
Football
Football Game New
Declined
Suffered
New Game
Copy Quote
My egotistical concern was less that I would fail to relate to my classmates than that they would know nothing of my uniquely tortured life's course and, thus, me.
John Thorn / Historian
Classmates
Concern
Egotistical
Failing
Relate
Life Me Nothing
Less
Course
Fail
Thus
Tortured
Uniquely
Copy Quote
Award trophies, as opposed to letting the players define and claim their own. Ultimately, pay them to play so that their activity not only resembles work but is work.
John Thorn / Historian
Activity
Awards
Pay
Player
Trophies
Award
Claim
Define
Letting
Opposed
Resembles
Ultimately
Copy Quote
Pursuing employment or climatic relief, we live in voluntary exile from our extended families and our longer past, but in an involuntary exile from ourselves and our own past.
John Thorn / Historian
Employment
Exile
Involuntary
Past
Relief
Extended
Families
Pursuing
Voluntary
Copy Quote
But the dream is never forgotten, only put aside and never out of reach: Where once the dream connected boys with the world of men, now it reconnects men with the spirit of boys.
John Thorn / Historian
Dream
Boys
Connected
Forgotten
Stars
Boy
Aside
Reach
Copy Quote
For many of us, sport has provided the continuity in our lives, the alternative family to the one we left behind. It gives us something to talk about, to preen about, to care about.
John Thorn / Historian
Continuity
Our Lives
Alternative
Sport
Provided
Copy Quote
But the citizens of Cincinnati loved their Reds because they won, no matter what their addresses had been the year before. They rooted for the Old-English 'C' on the players' shirts.
John Thorn / Historian
Citizens
Rooted
Shirts
Address
Cincinnati
Won
Copy Quote
We know these men are professionals whose services are up for bid and whose bags are packed, and yet we call them our own and take personal, even civic pride in their accomplishments.
John Thorn / Historian
Men
Bags
Pride
Accomplishments
Bid
Call
Civic
Packed
Personal
Professionals
Services
Whose
Copy Quote
Baseball is not a conventional industry. It belongs neither to the players nor management, but to all of us. It is our national pastime, our national symbol, and our national treasure.
John Thorn / Historian
Baseball
Player
Treasure
Copy Quote
Why we play as children is not because it is our work or because it is how we learn, though both statements are true; we play because we are wired for joy, it is imperative as human beings.
John Thorn / Historian
Children
Human Beings
Joy
Play
Statements
Beings
Imperative
Wired
Copy Quote
And then came the nineties, when management, suddenly frightened that they had ceded control to the players, sought to restore baseball's profitability by 'running the game like a business.'
John Thorn / Historian
Running
Baseball
Frightened
Management
Player
Profitability
Control
Came
Nineties
Restore
Sought
Suddenly
Copy Quote
Planning to play: that's what saving for retirement is today - and it is antithetical to the nature of play, fully within the definition of work, and blissfully ignorant of the reality of death.
John Thorn / Historian
Ignorant
Planning
Play
Reality
Retirement
Blissfully
Definition
Fully
Copy Quote
I think that much of this was running in background as I contemplated whether or not to attend the PS 99 reunion, although I certainly anticipated that I would not; it smelled like death, not youth.
John Thorn / Historian
Death
Running
Reunion
Thinking
Youth
Although
Anticipated
Background
Attend
Certainly
Contemplated
Smelled
Copy Quote
One of the first lessons he or she learns is that in baseball anything, absolutely anything, can happen. Just two days ago as I write this, something happened that had never happened in baseball before.
John Thorn / Historian
Baseball
Lessons
Two
Writing
He Or She
Learns
Copy Quote
We are fans because the game also appeals to our local pride, our pleasure in thinking of ourselves as, yes, Americans but nonetheless different from residents of other towns, other states, other regions.
John Thorn / Historian
Appeals
Fans
Pleasure
Pride
Regions
Residents
States
Towns
Local
Nonetheless
Yes
Copy Quote
For many in baseball September is a month of stark contrast with April, when everyone had dared to hope. If baseball is a lot like life, as pundits declare, it is because life is more about losing than winning.
John Thorn / Historian
April
Baseball
Contrast
Losing
Months
Pundits
September
Winning
Had
Everyone
Month
Dared
Declare
Stark
Copy Quote
Do we settle on a regional team because we can go to its ballpark and see its games on television? Or do we choose a team as our favorite because it has an especially appealing player, a Barry Bonds or an Ichiro?
John Thorn / Historian
Games
Player
Team
Television
Appealing
Ballpark
Barry
Bonds
Favorite
Choose
Regional
Settle
Copy Quote
But baseball bounced back in the next decade to reclaim its place as the national pastime: new heroes, spirited competition, and booming prosperity gave birth to dreams of expansion, both within the major leagues and around the world.
John Thorn / Historian
Dream
Baseball
Birth
Competition
Expansion
Hero
Pastime
Prosperity
Spirited
Heroes
Booming
Decade
Major
Leagues
Major Leagues
National Pastime
Reclaim
Copy Quote
As the game enters its glorious final weeks, the chill of fall signals the reality of defeat for all but one team. The fields of play will turn brown and harden, the snow will fall, but in the heart of the fan sprouts a sprig of green.
John Thorn / Historian
Brown
Chill
Defeat
Fall
Fields
Glorious
Green
Heart
Reality
Signals
Snow
Team
Game
Weeks
Final
Harden
Copy Quote
Better than anything else in our culture, it enables fathers and sons to speak on a level playing field while building up from within a personal history of shared experience - a group history - that may be tapped into at will in years to come.
John Thorn / Historian
Father
Level Playing Field
Son
Speak
Years
Within
Anything Else
Enables
Fathers
Group
Personal
Playing Field
Shared
Sons
Copy Quote
More fundamentally, it is a dream that does not die with the onset of manhood: the dream is to play endlessly, past the time when you are called home for dinner, past the time of doing chores, past the time when your body betrays you past time itself.
John Thorn / Historian
Dream
Home
Body
Chores
Manhood
Past
Your Body
Time Past Your
Die
Betrays
Itself
Endlessly
Fundamentally
Past Time
Copy Quote
Yes, we've seen it all before. And yes, those who do not study history are condemned to repeat it. But no, the sky is not falling - baseball is such a great game that neither the owners nor the players can kill it. After some necessary carnage, market forces will prevail.
John Thorn / Historian
Baseball
Carnage
Fall
Owners
Player
Sky
Study
History Great Game
Seen
Condemned
Falling
Forces
Market
Market Forces
Necessary
Neither
Nor
Prevail
Repeat
Study History
Yes
Copy Quote
It says, I think, that at root that we're children, or we'd like to be. And the best of us each keep as much of that childhood with us as we grow into adulthood, as we can muster... And even after we're past the point of being able to play the game with any skill, if we love it, then it's like Peter Pan - we remain boys forever, we don't die.
John Thorn / Historian
Boys
Children
Past
Copy Quote

Related Historian Authors

Niccolo Machiavelli
Historian
Monday, May 03, 1469
Tuesday, Jun 21, 1527
Yehuda Bauer
Historian
William Winwood Reade
Historian
William Thomas Walsh
Historian
Friday, Sep 11, 1891
Saturday, Jan 22, 1949
William S. Mcfeely
Historian
Thursday, Sep 25, 1930
William Patten
Historian
William Montgomery Watt
Historian
Sunday, Mar 14, 1909
Tuesday, Oct 24, 2006
William Hardy Mcneill
Historian
Wednesday, Oct 31, 1917
Friday, Jul 08, 2016
William H. Prescott
Historian
Wednesday, May 04, 1796
Friday, Jan 28, 1859
William Dalrymple
Historian
Saturday, Mar 20, 1965
Friday, Jan 28, 1814
William C. Davis
Historian
William Archibald Dunning
Historian
William Appleman Williams
Historian
Sunday, Jun 12, 1921
Monday, Mar 05, 1990
Webster Tarpley
Historian
Walter Rodney
Historian
Monday, Mar 23, 1942
Friday, Jun 13, 1980

View All Historian Quotes

Top Authors

Marcus Aurelius
Roman Emperor
Saturday, Apr 26, 0121
Friday, Mar 17, 0180
Muhammad Ali
Professional Boxer
Saturday, Jan 17, 1942
Friday, Jun 03, 2016
Benjamin Franklin
Founding Father Of The United States
Sunday, Jan 17, 1706
Saturday, Apr 17, 1790
Voltaire
Writer
Sunday, Nov 21, 1694
Saturday, May 30, 1778
Donald Trump
45Th President Of The United States
Friday, Jun 14, 1946
Robin Williams
Actor
Saturday, Jul 21, 1951
Monday, Aug 11, 2014
Vincent Van Gogh
Painter
Wednesday, Mar 30, 1853
Tuesday, Jul 29, 1890
Napoleon Hill
Author
Friday, Oct 26, 1883
Sunday, Nov 08, 1970
Francis Of Assisi
Saint
Thursday, Jun 24, 1182
Saturday, Oct 03, 1226
Carl Sagan
Astronomer
Friday, Nov 09, 1934
Friday, Dec 20, 1996
Vince Lombardi
Football Player
Wednesday, Jun 11, 1913
Thursday, Sep 03, 1970
Walt Whitman
Poet
Monday, May 31, 1819
Saturday, Mar 26, 1892
Stephen Hawking
Physicist
Thursday, Jan 08, 1942
John Lewis
U.s. Representative
Wednesday, Feb 21, 1940
Jordan Peterson
Psychologist

View All Authors

Share This Page