History Quotes:

History is, and has always been trameled by facts. It may ignore some and deny others; but it cannot accommodate itself unreservedly to theories; it cannot be stripped of things evidenced in favor of things surmised.

topic: History, Fluid

The comfortable thing about the study of history is that it inclines us to think hopefully of our own times.

topic: History, Favors, May

History is not written in the interests of morality.

topic: Thinking, History, Study

This American system of ours,call it Americanism,call it capitalism,call it what you will,gives each and every one of us a great opportunity if we seize it with both hands and make the most of it.

topic: History, Morality, Interest

- Al Capone

topic: Opportunity, Hands, History, Americanism, Bootlegging

We need a war every 10 years, so we can stay match fit in case the Germans try again.

- Al Murray

topic: War, Years, History

History, in a democratic age, tends to become a series of popular apologies, and is inclined to assume that the people can do no wrong.

- Albert Pollard

source: Albert Pollard (2018). “Henry viii”, p.199, Ozymandias Press

topic: Apology, People, History

Purely historical thought is nihilistic; it wholeheartedly accepts the evil of history.

Those who weep for the happy periods which they encounter in history acknowledge what they want; not the alleviation but the silencing of misery.

topic: History, Evil, Historical

History only exists, in the final analysis, for God.

topic: History, Encounters, Want, Silencing

The entire history of mankind is, in any case, nothing but a prolonged fight to the death for the conquest of universal prestige and absolute power.

topic: History, Finals, Analysis

If man is reduced to being nothing but a character in history, he has no other choice but to subside into the sound and fury of acompletely irrational history or to endow history with the form of human reason.

topic: Fighting, History, Prestige, Absolute Power

History, as an entirety, could only exist in the eyes of an observer outside it and outside the world. History only exists, in the final analysis, for God.

topic: Character, Men, History

My country has no history, only a past.

topic: Eye, History, Finals

- Alden Nowlan

source: Alden Nowlan (2004). “Between Tears and Laughter: Selected Poems”, Bloodaxe Books

topic: Country, Past, History

The most shocking fact about war is that its victims and its instruments are individual human beings, and that these individual beings are condemned by the monstrous conventions of politics to murder or be murdered in quarrels not their own.

Death is the only thing we haven't succeeded in completely vulgarizing.

topic: War, History, Facts, Shocking, Monstrous

From their experience or from the recorded experience of others (history), men learn only what their passions and their metaphysical prejudices allow them to learn.

topic: History, Atheism

The charm of history and its enigmatic lesson consist in the fact that, from age to age, nothing changes and yet everything is completely different.

topic: Passion, Men, History

Nobody can have the consolations of religion or philosophy unless he has first experienced their desolations.

topic: Inspirational, Birthday, History, Enigmatic

The people who have really made history are the martyrs.

topic: Philosophy, History, Firsts

- Aleister Crowley

topic: People, History, Made

A bottomless pit of violence, a Tower of Babel where all are speakers and no hearers.

- Alexander Smith

topic: History, Tower Of Babel, Towers, Babel

On their side more men are standing, on ours more will fight!

- Alexander the Great

topic: Fighting, Men, History

When the past no longer illuminates the future, the spirit walks in darkness.

- Alexis de Tocqueville

source: "Democracy in America". Book by Alexis de Tocqueville, Volume II. Book Four, Chapter VIII, 1840.

topic: Past, History, Darkness, Enamored

I am a typed director. If I made Cinderella, the audience would immediately be looking for a body in the coach.

- Alfred Hitchcock

topic: Art, History, Body

History has become more important than ever because of the to unprecedented ability of the historical sciences to take in man's life on earth as a whole.

- Alfred Kazin

topic: Men, History, Historical, Unprecedented

The real history does not get written, because it is not in people's brains but in their nerves and vitals.

- Alfred North Whitehead

topic: Real, People, History

History is the sextant of states which, tossed by wind and current, would be lost in confusion if they could not fix their position.

- Allan Nevins

source: Allan Nevins (1962). “The Gateway to History”

topic: Wind, History, Confusion

A mind devoid of prepossessions is likely to be devoid of all mental furniture. And the historian who thinks that he can clean his mind as he would a slate with a wet sponge, is ignorant of the simplest facts of mental life.

- Allen Johnson

topic: Thinking, History, Ignorant, Slate

History is neither more nor less than biography on a large scale.

- Alphonse de Lamartine

topic: History, Biographies, Scales

History teaches everything, even the future.

- Alphonse de Lamartine

source: Alphonse de Lamartine (1854). “History of the French Revolution of 1848”, p.19

topic: History, Teach

No matter what accomplishments you make, somebody helped you.

- Althea Gibson

topic: Motivational, History, Accomplishment, Inspirational Team Building, Inspirational Teamwork

We learned the value of research in World War II.

- Amar Bose

topic: War, History, Research, World War I, World War Ii

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

- Ambrose Bierce

topic: Lying, History, Soldier, World History, Great History

God alone knows the future, but only an historian can alter the past.

- Ambrose Bierce

topic: Past, History, Historian

It was a needed instrument to spread abroad the truth of a new gospel to woman, and I could not withhold my hand to stay the work I had begun. I saw not the end from the beginning and dreamed where to my propositions to society would lead me,

- Amelia Bloomer

topic: Hands, History, Saws

Women must pay for everything. They do get more glory than men for comparable feats, but, they also get more notoriety when they crash.

- Amelia Earhart

topic: Sisterhood, Men, History, Notoriety, Feats

Because history is only an aggregate of personal hostilities, personal prejudices, personal blindness and irrationality, there are times when we have to live against it.

- Anais Nin

topic: History, Prejudice, Blindness, Irrationality

When a history book contains no lies it is always tedious.

- Anatole France

topic: Lying, Book, History

Heresy is the lifeblood of religions. It is faith that begets heresies. There are no heresies in a dead religion.

- Andre Suares

topic: Art, Philosophy, History, Begets

History is either a moral argument with lessons for the here-and-now, or it is merely an accumulation of pointless facts.

- Andrew Marr

source: Andrew Marr (2009). “A History of Modern Britain”, p.19, Pan Macmillan

topic: History, Lessons, Facts

With their own record of killing 12 million American Indians and supporting slavery for four decades after the British abolished it, Americans wish to project their historical guilt on to someone else.

- Andrew Roberts

topic: History, Historical, Wish

What finally scuppered Napoleon's Europe was of course the fatal combination of the English Channel and the Russian winter; the same unlikely partnership that also did for Hitler's Europe.

- Andrew Roberts

topic: Winter, Europe, History

Time in its irresistible and ceaseless flow carries along on its flood all created things and drowns them in the depths of obscurity. . . . But the tale of history forms a very strong bulwark against the stream of time, and checks in some measure its irresistible flow, so that, of all things done in it, as many as history has taken over it secures and binds together, and does not allow them to slip away into the abyss of oblivion.

- Anna Komnene

topic: Strong, Taken, History, Things Done

It takes all sorts to make a world - saints as well as soldiers.

- Anthony Anderson

topic: History, Soldier, Historical, Wind In The Willows

Let a man in a garret but burn with enough intensity and he will set fire to the world.

- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

topic: Men, Fire, History

No individual is isolated. He who is sad, saddens others.

- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

topic: Art, Philosophy, History

History is only time furnished with dates and rich with events.

- Antoine Rivarol

topic: History, Events, Rich

No people in the world other than the English would have had the courage, in the midst of war, to tell the people such unvarnished truth.

- Anton Walbrook

source: "Personal Quotes/ Biography". www.imdb.com.

topic: War, History, People, British History

History is a big word..........History is not the sort of animal you can domesticate.

- Antonio Tabucchi

topic: Animal, History, Bigs

Russians can give you arms but only the United States can give you a solution.

- Anwar Sadat

topic: Pregnancy, History, Giving

A poet's object is not to tell what actually happened but what could or would happen either probably or inevitably.... For this reason poetry is something more scientific and serious than history, because poetry tends to give general truths while history gives particular facts.

- Aristotle

topic: Truth, History, Giving

Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.

- Aristotle

topic: Philosophical, History, Poetry

If you would understand anything, observe its beginning and its development

- Aristotle

topic: History, Development

History is a vision of God's creation on the move.

- Arnold J. Toynbee

topic: Moving, History, Vision, God's Creation

[History is] petrified imagination.

- Arthur Baer

topic: History, Imagination

When a person identifies himself with a group his critical faculties are diminished and his passions enhanced by a kind of emotive resonance. The individual is not a killer, the group is, and by identifying with it, the individual becomes one. This is the infernal dialect reflected in man's history.

- Arthur Koestler

topic: Passion, Men, History

Honest history is the weapon of freedom.

Man generally is entangled in insoluble problems; history is consequently a tragedy in which we are all involved, whose keynote is anxiety and frustration, not progress and fulfilment.

topic: History, Weapons, Honest

The passion for tidiness is the historian's occupational disease.

topic: Frustration, Men, History

For history is to the nation as memory is to the individual.

topic: Passion, History, Disease

The use of history as therapy means the corruption of history as history.

topic: Memories, History, Individual

History is, indeed, an argument without end.

source: "The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society". Book by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. (p. 93), 1993.

topic: Mean, History, Use

I still feel-kind of temporary about myself.

topic: History, Argument, Ends

- Arthur Miller

topic: Art, Philosophy, History

History has now been for the first time systematically considered, and has been found, like other phenomena, subject to invariable laws.

- Auguste Comte

topic: Law, History, Firsts

Libraries are not made, they grow.

I am far too much in doubt about the present, far too perturbed .about the future, to be otherwise than profoundly reverential about the past.

source: Augustine Birrell (1899). “Collected Essays”

topic: History, Library, Librarian, Library Books

That great dust-heap called 'history'.

topic: Past, History, Doubt

History is a pageant and not a philosophy.

source: Obiter Dicta "Carlyle" (1884) See Trotsky 2

topic: Dust, History

Histories used often to be stories: the fashion now is to leave out the story. Our histories are stall-fed: the facts are absorbed by the reflexions, as the meat is sometimes by the fat.

source: Augustine Birrell (1902). “Collected Essays”

topic: Philosophy, History, Pageant

- Augustus William Hare

topic: Fashion, History, Meat

When we skim along the surface of history we see little but the rough barren rocks that rise out of it.

- Augustus William Hare

topic: Rocks, History, Littles

The effects of human wickedness are written on the page of history in characters of blood: but the impression soon fades away; so more blood must be shed to renew it.

- Augustus William Hare

topic: Character, Blood, History

Every major horror of history was committed in the name of an altruistic motive. Has any act of selfishness ever equalled the carnage perpetrated by disciples of altruism.

- Ayn Rand

topic: Selfish, Names, History

In strategy the longest way round is often the shortest way there- a direct approach to the object exhausts the attacker and hardens the resistance by compression, whereas an indirect approach loosens the defender's hold by upsetting his balance.

- B. H. Liddell Hart

topic: War, Power, History, Compression, Direct Approach

The trouble with American History is that you don't remember it, and why should you? Nobody does.

- Barbara Holland

topic: History, Doe, Remember

It's really hard for me to use the term 'history' in the singular, because it suggests a reductivist view of how moments and events congeal and reflect the passage of time. I'd rather stick to the pluralness of 'histories' in order to suggest the simultaneity, the parallel forces at work, which produce lived experience.

- Barbara Kruger

topic: Views, Order, History

In individuals as in nations, contentment is silent, which tends to unbalance the historical record.

Completeness is rare in history ...

topic: Peace, History, Historical

The poets have familiarized more people with history than have the historians ...

topic: History, Completeness

To rush in upon an event before its significance has had time to separate from the surrounding circumstances may be enterprising, but is it useful? ... The recent prevalence of these hot histories on publishers' lists raises the question: Should - or perhaps can - history be written while it is still smoking?

topic: People, History, Poetry

I arrived in Hollywood without having my nose fixed, my teeth capped, or my name changed. That is very gratifying to me.

topic: History, Smoking, Events, Enterprising

- Barbra Streisand

topic: Names, History, Hollywood

Happy the people whose annals are tiresome.

- Baron de Montesquieu

topic: People, History, Tiresome, Vacant

I should like to abolish funerals; the time to mourn a person is at his birth, not his death.

- Baron de Montesquieu

topic: Art, Philosophy, History

Hubert Humphrey talks so fast that listening to him is like trying to read Playboy magazine with your wife turning the pages.

- Barry Goldwater

topic: Marriage, History, Wife, Playboy Bunnies, Playboy Magazine

What is not recorded is not remembered.

- Benazir Bhutto

source: Benazir Bhutto (1988). “Daughter of the East”, Hamish Hamilton

topic: History, Remembered

I was always a friend of southern rights, but an enemy of southern wrongs.

- Benjamin Butler

topic: War, Rights, History, American Civil War

Assassination has never changed the history of the world.

- Benjamin Disraeli

topic: Change, History, Historical, Assassination

Truth travels slowly, but it will reach even you in time.

- Benjamin Disraeli

topic: Truth, Learning, History

Many scholars have complained of our tendency to see history only in conflicts, but I am not convinced they are right. It is in conflict that our values are exposed.

- Bernard Beckett

topic: History, Conflict, Tendencies

Between truth and the search for it, I choose the second.

- Bernard Berenson

topic: History, Comparison

... the word "theory" ... was originally an Orphic word, which Cornford interprets as "passionate sympathetic contemplation" ... For Pythagoras, the "passionate sympathetic contemplation" was intellectual, and issued in mathematical knowledge ... To those who have reluctantly learnt a little mathematics in school this may seem strange; but to those who have experienced the intoxicating delight of sudden understanding that mathematics gives, from time to time, to those who love it, the Pythagorean view will seem completely natural.

- Bertrand Russell

topic: School, Views, History

A man without a bias cannot write interesting history - if indeed such a man exists.

- Bertrand Russell

topic: Writing, Men, History

Peter Jones's is a vital public service. He reminds us that while we shouldn't live in the past, we are wiser and stronger when we live with it.

- Bettany Hughes

topic: Past, History, Stronger

The feminine mystique has succeeded in burying millions of American women alive.

- Betty Friedan

topic: Women, History, Alive, Burying, Mystique

If there is a single trait in our character that has historically set us apart from other nations, it is our determination to limit the authority of those who rule over us.

- Billy Bragg

source: Billy Bragg (2013). “The Progressive Patriot”, p.330, Random House

topic: Determination, Character, History, British History

Hindsight is always twenty-twenty.

- Billy Wilder

topic: History, Twenties, Hindsight

In the United States those bits of our history that remain are paved over, sanitized, packaged for easy consumption. At those sites not already lost to commercial development, we walk between velvet ropes, herded by guides, warned not to touch. Our icons are preserved under glass, their magic demystified in glossy brochures.

- Biloine W. Young

topic: Glasses, Icons, History, Brochures

The last function of reason is to recognize that there are an infinity of things which surpass it.

- Blaise Pascal

topic: History, Lasts, Infinity, Reason And Logic

[H]istorians have powerful imaginations, which are essential and dangerous.

- Bob Stinson

topic: Powerful, History, Imagination

What the hell difference does it make, left or right? There were good men lost on both sides.

- Brendan Behan

topic: Men, Differences, History

The 1860 election became a referendum on the southern way of life.

The Confederate Constitution was almost identical to that of the United States.

topic: War, History, Southern

Like most Rebel soldiers, Sam Watkins owned no slaves.

topic: War, History, United States

Shiloh had as many casualties as Waterloo, and yet there were another 20 Waterloos to come.

topic: War, History, Soldier

History does not usually make real sense until long afterward.

topic: War, History, Casualties, Waterloo, Shiloh

The 1st Amendment protects the right to speak, not the right to spend.

topic: Real, Long, History

- Byron White

topic: History, Speak, Amendments

A nation does not create the historians it deserves; the historians are far more likely to create the nation.

historical research of the truly scholastic kind is not connected with human beings at all. It is a pure study, like higher mathematics.

topic: History, Doe, Historian

somewhere about the eighteenth century, history tacitly replaced religion as the school of public morals.

topic: History, Historical, Research, Historical Research, Scholastics

History, in spite of the occasional protest of historians, will always be used in a general way as a collection of political and moral precedents.

topic: School, History, Moral

All normal human beings are interested in their past. Only when the interest becomes an obsession, overshadowing present and future conduct, is it a danger. In much the same way healthy nations are interested in their history, but a morbid preoccupation with past glories is a sign that something is wrong with the constitution of the State.

topic: History, Political, Way

My own varying estimates of the facts themselves, as the years passed, showed me too clearly how much of history must always rest in the eye of the beholder; our deductions are so often different it is impossible they should always be right.

topic: Past, History, Healthy, Overshadowing

Without passion there might be no errors, but without passion there would certainly be no history.

topic: Eye, Years, History

Without the imaginative insight which goes with creative literature, history cannot be intelligibly written.

topic: Passion, Errors, History

History being the record of human action is a richly variegated material, and it is not easy to give a true impression of the stuff by snipping off an inch or two for a pattern.

topic: History, Creative, Literature, Literature History, Historiography

The historian ought to be the humblest of men; he is faced a dozen times a day with the evidence of his own ignorance; he is perpetually confronted with his own humiliating inability to interpret his material correctly; he is, in a sense that no other writer is, in bondage to that material.

topic: Two, History, Giving, Human Actions