HISTORY QUOTES III

quotations about history

No generation can escape history.

GEORGE H. W. BUSH

commencement address at Texas A&M University, May 12, 1989

Tags: George H. W. Bush


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

Tags: Walter Bagehot


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

Tags: Seamus Heaney


History can be well written only in a free country.

VOLTAIRE

letter to Frederick the Great

Tags: Voltaire


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

Tags: Karl Marx


History is not the sort of animal you can domesticate.

ANTONIO TABUCCHI

Pereira Maintains


History is a compendium of uncertainties.

E. P. DAY

Day's Collacon


To remain ignorant of things that happened before you were born is to remain a child.

CICERO

Tags: Cicero


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


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

Tags: Walter Bagehot


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


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

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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

Tags: Ambrose Bierce


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, like God, is watching what we do.

BONO

remarks at National Prayer Breakfast, Feb. 2, 2006

Tags: Bono


No man is free of his own history.

ANITA BROOKNER

Latecomers

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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

Tags: Karl Marx


History is on every occasion the record of what one age finds worthy of note in another.

JACOB BURCKHARDT

Judgements on History and Historians


The history of the race is but that of the individual "writ large".

GEORGE HENRY LEWES

The Foundations of a Creed


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