History
Main article: History of alcoholic beveragesAlcoholic beverages have been drunk by people around the world since ancient times. Reasons that have been proposed for drinking them include:
- They are part of a people's standard diet
- They are drunk for medical reasons
- For their relaxant effects
- For their euphoric effects
- For recreational purposes
- For artistic inspiration
- For their putative aphrodisiac effects
Read more about this topic: Alcohol Consumption
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of persecution is a history of endeavors to cheat nature, to make water run up hill, to twist a rope of sand.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“What is most interesting and valuable in it, however, is not the materials for the history of Pontiac, or Braddock, or the Northwest, which it furnishes; not the annals of the country, but the natural facts, or perennials, which are ever without date. When out of history the truth shall be extracted, it will have shed its dates like withered leaves.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Anything in history or nature that can be described as changing steadily can be seen as heading toward catastrophe.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)