History Quotes

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.

~ Abraham Lincoln

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.

~ Will Durant

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

History n: an account mostly false of events mostly unimportant which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves and soldiers mostly fools.

~ Ambrose Bierce

The historical sense involves a perception not only of the pastness of the past but of its presence.

~ T. S. Eliot

Truth is the only merit that gives dignity and worth to history.

~ Lord Acton

History is more or less bunk.

~ Henry Ford

I have no history but the length of my bones.

~ Robin Skelton

History is a pact between the dead the living and the yet unborn.

~ Edmund Burke

A people without history is like wind on the buffalo grass.

~ Sioux Proverb

The function of posterity is to look after itself.

~ Dylan Thomas

The world's history is constant like the laws of nature and simple like the souls of men. The same conditions continually produce the same results.

~ Friedrich Von Schiller

History is just the portrayal of crimes and misfortunes.

~ Voltaire

We should keep the Panama Canal. After all we stole it fair and square.

~ S. J. Hayakawa

The history of things that didn't happen has never been written.

~ Henry Kissinger

The memories of men are too frail a thread to hang history from.

~ John Still

The rich experience of history teaches that up to now not a single class has voluntarily made way for another class.

~ Joseph Stalin

Dictators ride to and fro on tigers from which they dare not dismount. And the tigers are getting hungry.

~ Winston Churchill

It was called the Middle Ages, the Dark Ages. If not for the monks, everything the world had ever learned would have been lost. Well, we live in a similar time, when we're losing the vast majority of what we do and see and learn. But it doesn't have to be that way.

~ Dave Eggers

Those who neglect the lessons of their past are doomed to no future.

~ T.a. Uner

History is for human self-knowledge…the only clue to what man can do is what man has done. The value of history, then, is that it teaches us what man has done and thus what man is.

~ R.g. Collingwood

Start to focus on things that unite the races of people instead of things that divide us, and you will have already won the battle, and are a building block to the solution.

~ Ted Harts

If you put forth a small amount of effort, you just might find your next best friend for life is of a different race than your own.

~ Ted Harts

I only read books I know I will like

~ Vicky Unwin

I often noticed that the surrounding mountains inspired Hitler. He once joked that here he stood 'above the world' in an environment comparable to Olympius, legendary mount of the gods, but that alone can never have been the motivation for himto put down his private roots on Obersalzberg.

~ Heinz Linge

There began to appear before my romantic eyes...a vast and complicated network of espionage, terror, sadism and hate, from which no one, official or private, could escape.

~ Erik Larson

I'd rather be a pessimist because then I can only be pleasantly surprised.

~ Benjamin Franklin

The secret to the movie business, or any business, is to get a good education in a subject besides film - whether it's history, psychology, economics, or architecture - so you have something to make a movie about. All the skill in the world isn't going to help you unless you have something to say.

~ George Lucas

Many leaders of big organizations, I think, don't believe that change is possible. But if you look at history, things do change, and if your business is static, you're likely to have issues.

~ Larry Page

Love is never defeated, and I could add, the history of Ireland proves it.

~ Pope John Paul Ii

Jazz in itself is not struggling. That is, the music itself is not struggling... It's the attitude that's in trouble. My plays insist that we should not forget or toss away our history.

~ August Wilson