History Quotes

Nothing shines up a halo faster than death Matthew. But funerals are for the living... and revising history... only dilutes the lessons we should learn from it.

~ Father Lantom

I’ve spent a lot of time in the States, and the Big Country elates and irritates me simultaneously. It is a big boy child that frequently needs a hug: sometimes needing the prissiness of the world to remind it that its voice is not the only one. Africa is older and wiser, a poor grandmother, a pillaged woman, but still a strong woman. She knows she is a daughter of Earth. There are the sexy aunts of Asia and Europe, and of course, the fussy, once histrionic mother that is Britain. But it was Africa taught America the lesson of liberty.

~ Sean J Halford

Don't deny the past. Remember everything. If you're bitter, be bitter. Cry it out! Scream! Denial is gangrene.

~ Joy Kogawa

Only a blind man could have lived through these last years without seeing what was bearing down upon us; so I made myself blind as I could manage. I wanted to believe the worst was behind me, and I found an easy way to make it so. I simply turned my back on what was coming.

~ John Wray

The unfortunate Elizabeth Bathori was said to bathe in the blood of young girls in order to preserve her youth and beauty. Apparently more than 600 maidens went down the drain before anyone noticed something amiss at the castle. How very inobservant the neighbors must have been.

~ Robert Dunbar

For the miserable find comfort in the philosophy that not on them alone has evil fallen.

~ Procopius

And might it not be, continued Austerlitz, that we also have appointments to keep in the past, in what has gone before and is for the most part extinguished, and must go there in search of places and people who have some connection with us on the far side of time, so to speak?

~ W.g. Sebald

Instead of the former divinely appointed aims of the Jewish, Greek, or Roman nations, which ancient historians regarded as representing the progress of humanity, modern history has postulated its own aims- the welfare of the French, German, or English people, or, in its highest abstraction, the welfare and civilization of humanity in general, by which is usually meant that of the peoples occupying a small northwesterly portion of a large continent.

~ Leo Tolstoy

History is a treadmill turned by rising human numbers. Today GM crops are being marketed as the only means of avoiding mass starvation. They are unlikely to improve the lives of peasant farmers , but they may well enable them to survive in greater numbers.

~ John Gray

How were they to square the tremendous wealth they accrued with their image of themselves as frugal and virtuous? Easy: just argue that commerce was itself virtuous. To be rich in corrupt old Europe must be a sign of droneishness, but to be rich in fresh young American was the fruit of hard work. The beehive provided Americans with the ideal image for their religion of work.

~ Bee Wilson

All of us know history repeats itself, but mighty few of us recognize the repetition until too late.

~ Kenneth Roberts

Human history seems to me to be one long story of people sweeping down—or up, I suppose—replacing other people in the process.

~ Alexander Mccall Smith

The story of the bondage in Egypt, of the use of the Jews as slaves in great construction enterprises, their rebellion and escape - or emigration - to Asia, has many internal signs of essential truth, mingled, of course, with supernatural interpolations customary in all the historical writings of the ancient East.

~ Will Durant

There was something indomitable about Maria – like Britannia. He’d heard that she kept her head during a Chilean earthquake the year before when men of greater age and experience had panicked. Afterwards she was discovered calmly taking notes, recording the way the land hand risen, for publication, she said.

~ Sara Sheridan

... history - the lamp which illumines national character...

~ Lawrence Durrell

When the weakness of human soul conflict with writer's word , It will create self History.

~ Yaganesh Derasari

Every Moment can be History of tomorrow but its upon us what to do with this Moment-Samar Sudha

~ Samar Sudha

our country is poor but our hearts are rich

~ Adele Rickerby

The educated man, habitually, almost without noticing it, sees the present as something that grows out of a long perspective of centuries. In my the minds of my RAF hearers this perspective simply did not exist. It seemed to me that they did not really believe that we have any reliable knowledge of historic man. But this was often curiously combined with a conviction that we knew a great deal about Prehistoric Man: doubtless because Prehistoric Man is labelled Science (which is reliable) whereas Napoleon or Julius Caesar is labelled as History (which is not.

~ C.s. Lewis

It’s my belief that all of the greatest tales ever told have been told in saloons. It was in such smoky, heathen-filled den of iniquity that I first heard the tale of the Bone Feud. As with all great tales, it was at its core one hundred percent true. In fact, much of it has long been a matter of historical record. But tales grow in the telling, and I therefore must apologize in advance for any inaccuracies, and beg your indulgence for any romanticized embellishments. I have decided to present the story here, just as it was told to me. I find it entirely too rich and too entertaining to alter, simply to curry favor with pedants and historians.

~ Wynne Mclaughlin

When the big German guns at Calais fired on us, we realized, we had been strafed by Spitfires from the RAF during working up exercises for the invasion, accidentally attacked by the USN off Normandy after D-Day and shelled by the British Army in the English Channel. It was about time the enemy took a few shots at us too!Jack Harold, RCNVR, SignalmanHMCS TRENTONIANChapter 9, White Ensign Flying -The Story of HMCS TRENTONIAN.

~ Roger Litwiller

When it was all overthe centuries startedto roll by and history was writtenby thosewith no storiesmisery turned into myth and figures of speech played catalyst to happiness

~ Bänoo Zan

War had bled color from everything, leaving nothing but a storm of gray.

~ Ruta Sepetys

He had followed the calendar, the years, time-Bird farted.And it came to me, as though it were riding one moment of the gusting wind, as though bird had had it in him all the time and had passed it to me in that one moment of instant corruption.

~ James Welch

History is not like some individual person, which uses men to achieve its ends. History is nothing but the actions of men in pursuit of their ends.

~ Karl Marx

In some way the god had to be appeased and satisfied; for his worshipers had made him in the image and dream of themselves, and he had no great regard for human life, or womanly tears.

~ Will Durant

[A writer] cannot serve today those who make history, he must serve those who are subject to it.

~ Albert Camus

Yet it is also a tonic and an antidote to dullness to be with the Serbs. They possess the irresponsible gaiety that we traditionally connect with the Irish, with whom they have often been compared. Other less convenient sides of the Irish character are also typical in the Serbs, such as a cheerful contempt for punctuality in daily life and a ready willingness, arising clearly from politeness and good nature, to make promises that are not always fulfilled. But perhaps the most pronounced of these similarities is to be found in the songs of Serbia and Ireland. With both peoples the historic songs about the past are songs of sorrow, or noble struggles against overwhelming odds, of failure redeemed by unconquerable resolve. There is nothing strange in this combination of laughing gaiety and profound melancholy. It is often only those who are truly capable of the one emotion who also have the faculty for the other.

~ R.g.d. Laffan

The true lessons to be learned from Albert Speer are those that help us to recognize the Albert Speers living amongst us.

~ Geetanjali Mukherjee

The past is recorded almost exclusively in the voices of elites and males, in the viewpoints of the wealthy and the powerful, in the visions of the literate and the educated.

~ John Dominic Crossan

I have always believed there is great value in studying the flaws of mankind and men —even fictional characters. All of us are flawed. All of us are diminished by some form of prejudice and bias. If a fictional character is to be realistic, he must struggle with imperfections and weaknesses.

~ K. Lee Lerner

Ignoring the evils of our history will only cause them to reoccur.

~ R.m. Donaldson

We make history every day, Professor. The question is whether or not you'll be remembered for it.Grant McKingsley

~ Samuel L. Norman

The author says that though the Mexican War wound down, the interpretation of it was just beginning.

~ Harold Holzer

The real tragedy was not that Speer chose to side with the Nazis, but that he did not care which side he was on, as long as he benefited from it.

~ Geetanjali Mukherjee

History is only ever invisible when it abets your sense of self, your desires, your ambitions, when it carries your life along in a kind of frictionless way.

~ Garth Greenwell

For the commission to do a great building, I would have sold my soul like Faust. Now I had found my Mephistopheles. He seemed no less engaging than Goethe's.

~ Albert Speer

Elizabeth's whole style of rule was pragmatic and free from preconceptions. It was not that she had no strategic aims, but they were broad and simple. God had entrusted her with three things: a realm to defend; a church to lead in the true way; and a people to protect, both against foreign enemies and against themselves.

~ David Loades

All times are valuable; the past, present and the future.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Minnie Spotted Wolf from Butte, Montana, was the first Native American to enlist in the Marine Corps Womens' Reserve. Spotted Wolf joined in 1943. She commented that Marine Corps boot camp was hard, but not that hard.

~ Tom Holm