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Quotations on History
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The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there. ~ Unknown
History belongs to the winner. ~ Unknown
History is something that never happened, written by a man who wasn't there. ~ Unknown
We learn nothing from history except that we learn nothing from history. ~ Unknown
History: An account, mostly false, of events unimportant, which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly fools. ~ Ambrose Bierce
Mythology: the body of a primitive people's beliefs, concerning its origin, early history, heroes, deitits and so forth, as distinguished from the true accounts which it invents later. ~ Ambrose Bierce
History is nothing but a pack of tricks that we play upon the dead. ~ Voltaire
History is just a portrayal of crimes and misfortunes. ~ Voltaire
To give an accurate description of what never happened is the proper occupation of the historian. ~ Oscar Wilde
Perhaps in time the so-called Dark Ages will be thought of as including our own. ~ Georg C. Lichtenberg
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. ~ George Santayana
The only thing that does not change is that at any and every time it appears that there have been "great changes." ~ Marcel Proust
When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority are wrong. The minority are right.
~ Eugene V. Debs
Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it and wiser than the one that comes after it. ~ George Orwell
We have the power to make this the best generation of mankind in the history of the world - or the last. ~ John F. Kennedy
It has been said that although 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
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 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 books that contain no lies are extremely dull. ~ Anatole France
Historians are like deaf people who go on answering questions that no one has asked them. ~ Leo Tolstoy
Throughout history females have picked providers. Males have picked anything. ~ Margaret Mead
The wisdom of hindsight, so useful to historians and indeed to authors of memoirs, is sadly denied to practicing politicians. ~ Margaret Thatcher
How many pens are broken, how many ink bottles consumed, to write about things that have never happened. ~ Talmud
History teaches us that whenever a weak and ignorant people possess a thing which a strong and enlightened people want, it must be yielded up peaceably. ~ Mark Twain
The game of History is usually played by the best and the worst over the heads of the majority in the middle. ~ Eric Hoffer
What is amusing now had to be taken in desperate earnest once. ~ Virginia Woolf
The greatest inventions were produced in the times of ignorance, as the use of the compass, gunpowder, and printing. ~ Jonathan Swift
It is sometimes very hard to tell the difference between history and the smell of skunk. ~ Rebecca West
A surfeit of the sweetest things
the deepest loathing to the stomach brings. ~ William Shakespeare - A Midsummer Night's Dream
How far that little candle throws his beams!
So shines a good deed in a naughty world. ~ William Shakespeare - The Merchant of Venice
Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie,
Which we ascribe to heaven. ~ William Shakespeare - All's Well That Ends Well
True hope is swift, and flies with swallow's wings.
Kings it makes gods, and meaner creatures kings. ~ William Shakespeare - King Richard III
The eagle suffers little birds to sing,
And is not careful what they mean thereby. ~ William Shakespeare - Titus Andronicus
History repeats itself, and that's one of the things that's wrong with history. ~ Clarence Darrow
History is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind. ~ Edward Gibbon
Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe. ~ H.G. Wells
History is a simple piece of paper covered with print. The main thing is still to make history, not to write it. ~ Otto von Bismarck
Throughout history the world has been laid waste to ensure the triumph of conceptions that are now as dead as the men that died for them. ~ Henri de Montherlant
We will hereafter believe less history than ever, now that we have seen how it is made. ~ Don Herold
Most of us spend too much time on the last twenty-four hours and too little on the last six thousand years. ~ Will Durant
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
Our ignorance of history makes us libel our own times. People have always been like this. ~ Gustave Flaubert
The past is a work of art, free of irrelevancies and loose ends. ~ Max Beerbohm
The people of Crete unfortunately make more history than they can consume locally. ~ Saki
The function of posterity is to look after itself. ~ Dylan Thomas
Very few things happen at the right time, and the rest do not happen at all. The conscientious historian will correct these defects. ~ Herodotus
How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is
To have a thankless child! ~ William Shakespeare - King Lear
Just as philosophy is the study of other people's misconceptions, so history is the study of other people's mistakes. ~ Philip Guedalla
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