I claim not to have controlled events but confess plainly that events have controlled me.
~ Abraham Lincoln
In essence the renaissance is simply the green end of one of civilization's hardest winters.
~ John Fowles
Man is a history-making creature who can neither repeat his past nor leave it behind.
~ W. H. Auden
That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that History has to teach.
~ Aldous Huxley
The effect of boredom on a large scale in history is underestimated. It is a main cause of revolutions and would soon bring to an end all the static Utopias and the farmyard civilization of the Fabians.
~ Dean William R. Inge
The game of History is usually played by the best and the worst over the heads of the majority in the middle.
~ Eric Hoffer
The people of Crete unfortunately make more history than they can consume locally.
~ Saki
When the historian Charles A. Beard was asked about the lessons from history he said there were four: 1. The bee fertilizes the flower it robs. 2. Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad with power. 3. The mills of God grind slowly but they grind exceeding small. 4. When it is dark enough you can see the stars.
~ Charles A. Beard
History doesn't pass the dishes again.
~ Louis-Ferdinand Céline
The past is a foreign country they do things differently there.
~ Anonymous
Very few things happen at the right time and the rest do not happen at all the conscientious historian will correct these defects.
~ Herodotus
Most history is a record of the triumphs disasters and follies of top people. The black hole in it is the way of life of mute inglorious men and women who made no nuisance of themselves in the world.
~ Philip Howard
Nostalgia is a seductive liar.
~ George W. Ball
It has been said that though God cannot alter the past historians can - it is perhaps because they can be useful to Him in this respect that He tolerates their existence.
~ Samuel Butler
It is pleasant to be transferred from an office where one is afraid of a sergeant-major into an office where one can intimidate generals and perhaps this is why history is so attractive to the more timid among us.
~ E. M. Forster
History never looks like history when you are living through it. It always looks confusing and messy and it always feels uncomfortable.
~ John W. Gardner
History is philosophy learned from examples.
~ Dionysius Of Halicarnassus
History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives.
~ Abba Eban
Noble acts and momentous events happen in the same way and produce the same impression as the ordinary facts.
~ Roberto Rossellini
Don't brood on what's past but never forget it either.
~ Thomas H. Raddall
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
~ George Santayana
Most of us spend too much time on the last twenty-four hours and too little on the last six thousand years.
~ Will Durant
I never realized that there was history close at hand beside my very own home. I did not realize that the old grave that stood among the brambles at the foot of our farm was history.
~ Stephen Leacock
All history is but the lengthened shadow of a great man.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
The history of the world is the record of a man in quest of his daily bread and butter.
~ Hendrik Willem Van Loon
The historian looks backward. In the end he also believes backward.
~ Friedrich Nietzsche
Biography is history seen through the prism of a person.
~ Louis Fischer
The past is a work of art free of irrelevancies and loose ends.
~ Max Beerbohm
Any event once it has occurred can be made to appear inevitable by a competent historian.
~ Lee Simonson
History is not another name for the past as many people imply. It is the name for stories about the past.
~ A. J. P. Taylor
With malice toward none with charity for all with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right let us strive on to finish the work we are in to bind up the nation's wounds.
Give the historians something to write about.
~ Propertius
Societies that do not eat people are fascinated by those that do.
~ Ronald Wright
War makes rattling good history but Peace is poor reading.
~ Thomas Hardy
The history of almost every civilization furnishes examples of geographical expansion coinciding with deterioration in quality.
~ Arnold Toynbee
History is past politics and politics present history.
~ John Seeley
The first qualification for a historian is to have no ability to invent.
~ Stendhal
One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say.
When great changes occur in history when great principles are involved as a rule the majority are wrong.
~ Eugene V. Debs
More history's made by secret handshakes than by battles bills and proclamations.
~ John Barth
