quotations about history
No man is free of his own history.
ANITA BROOKNER
Latecomers
Tell me the Acts, O historian, and leave me to reason upon them as I please; away with your reasoning and your rubbish. All that is not action is not worth reading.
WILLIAM BLAKE
Blake's Exhibition and Catalogue of 1809, A Descriptive Catalogue of Pictures: Number V. The Ancient Britons
The history of the race is but that of the individual "writ large".
GEORGE HENRY LEWES
The Foundations of a Creed
History, we know, is apt to repeat itself, and to foist very old incidents upon us with only a slight change of costume.
GEORGE ELIOT
Janet's Repentance
All you have learned from history is old ways of making mistakes. There is nothing that history can tell you about what we must do tomorrow. Only what we must not do.
EDWIN H. LAND
address to Polaroid Corporation employees at Symphony Hall in Boston, February 5, 1960
History shows that there are no invincible armies and that there never have been.
JOSEPH STALIN
radio address, July 3, 1941
History is on every occasion the record of what one age finds worthy of note in another.
JACOB BURCKHARDT
Judgements on History and Historians
There are singular moments in history, dates that divide all that goes before from all that comes after.
GEORGE H. W. BUSH
State of the Union Address, Jan. 31, 1990
History is philosophy teaching by example.
HENRY ST. JOHN BOLINGBROKE
Letters on the Study and Use of History
A good knowledge of things past is an armour against events to come.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
History is written by the victors, but it's victims who write the memoirs.
CAROL TAVRIS & ELLIOT ARONSON
Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me)
History is nothing but assisted and recorded memory.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
The Life of Reason
I'm interested in the way in which the past affects the present and I think that if we understand a good deal more about history, we automatically understand a great more about contemporary life.
TONI MORRISON
Time interview, Jan. 21, 1998
The people, and the people alone, are the motive force in the making of world history.
MAO ZEDONG
"On Coalition Government", Apr. 24, 1945
History is a vast dust-heap of falsehood with a few pennies of truth scattered through it.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Construed as a means instead of an end, history is the weapon with which we defend the future against the past.
LEWIS H. LAPHAM
Lapham's Quarterly, 2008
What dependence can I have on the alleged events of ancient history, when I find such difficulty in ascertaining the truth regarding a matter that has taken place only a few minutes ago, and almost in my own presence!
SIR WALTER RALEIGH
attributed, Testimony: Its Posture in the Scientific World
One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us.
CARL SAGAN
The Demon-Haunted World
Half the things you've been taught in school are just convenient fictions. History is a puppet show for childish minds.
JOHN TWELVE HAWKS
The Traveler
It is sometimes very hard to tell the difference between history and the smell of skunk.
REBECCA WEST
Black Lamb and Grey Falcon