quotations about history
It is difficult at times to repress the thought that history is about as instructive as an abattoir.
SEAMUS HEANEY
Nobel Lecture, Dec. 7, 1995
No generation can escape history.
GEORGE H. W. BUSH
commencement address at Texas A&M University, May 12, 1989
At any rate, the pre-historic times were spent in making men capable of writing a history, and having something to put in it when it is written, and we can see how it was done.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Physics and Politics
History is a compendium of uncertainties.
E. P. DAY
Day's Collacon
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
Truth is the only merit that gives dignity and worth to history.
LORD ACTON
The History of Freedom in Antiquity
History is the witness that testifies to the passing of time; it illumines reality, vitalizes memory, provides guidance in daily life and brings us tidings of antiquity.
CICERO
Pro Publio Sestio
The manner of writing history is as characteristic of the narrator as the actions are of the persons who are related to have performed them; often much more so. It may be generally defined as a view of one age taken by another; a picture of a series of men and women painted by one of another series.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
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 can be well written only in a free country.
VOLTAIRE
letter to Frederick the Great
I long for the time when all the human history is taught as one history, because it really is one history.
MAYA ANGELOU
Facebook post, Feb. 28, 2013
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 Devil's Dictionary
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
Die Heilige Familie
To remain ignorant of things that happened before you were born is to remain a child.
CICERO
It is sometimes very hard to tell the difference between history and the smell of skunk.
REBECCA WEST
Black Lamb and Grey Falcon
Men are not the causers of history. History itself, by a pressure of events, causes men to resort to particular actions.
TANITH LEE
The Gods are Thirsty
All great historical facts and personages occur, as it were, twice ... the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.
KARL MARX
The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
The history of the race is but that of the individual "writ large".
GEORGE HENRY LEWES
The Foundations of a Creed
No man is free of his own history.
ANITA BROOKNER
Latecomers
History is on every occasion the record of what one age finds worthy of note in another.
JACOB BURCKHARDT
Judgements on History and Historians