quotations about history
Great men are the inspired texts of that divine Book of Revelations, whereof a chapter is completed from epoch to epoch, and by some named History.
THOMAS CARLYLE, Sartor Resartus
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History is the autobiography of a madman.
ALEXANDER HERZEN, Dr. Krupov
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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
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History ... is a nightmare from which I am trying to wake.
JAMES JOYCE, Ulysses
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The history of mankind is a romance, a mask, a tragedy, constructed upon the principles of POETICAL JUSTICE; it is a noble or royal hunt, in which what is sport to the few is death to the many, and in which the spectators halloo and encourage the strong to set upon the weak, and cry havoc in the chase, though they do not share in the spoil.
WILLIAM HAZLITT, Characters of Shakespeare's Plays
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All true histories contain instruction; though, in some, the treasure may be hard to find, and when found, so trivial in quantity that the dry, shrivelled kernel scarcely compensates for the trouble of cracking the nut.
ANNE BRONTE, Agnes Grey
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Nothing has really happened until it has been recorded.
VIRGINIA WOOLF
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History is written by the winners.
ALEX HALEY, attributed, And I Quote
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Old men can make war, but it is children who will make history.
RAY MERRITT, Full of Grace
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I don't believe ... that history repeats itself. There is no cycle. History is permanently doing the same thing. Sometimes we don't notice what's going on, that's all--and sometimes we have no choice but to see.
MICHAEL MARSHALL, Blood of Angels
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Nowhere is it ordained that history moves in a straight line.
BARACK OBAMA, The Audacity of Hope
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Each day is a little bit of history.
JOSé SARAMAGO, Baltasar and Blimunda
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History can come in handy. If you were born yesterday, with no knowledge of the past, you might easily accept whatever the government tells you. But knowing a bit of history--while it would not absolutely prove the government was lying in a given instance--might make you skeptical, lead you to ask questions, make it more likely that you would find out the truth.
HOWARD ZINN, You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train
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It is sometimes very hard to tell the difference between history and the smell of skunk.
REBECCA WEST, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon
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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
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History is not the soil of happiness. The periods of happiness are blank pages in it.
GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL, Lectures on the Philosophy of History
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History viewed from the inside is always a dark, digestive mess, far different from the easily recognizable cow viewed from afar by historians.
DAN SIMMONS, Hyperion
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Any true student must realize that History has no beginning. Regardless of where a story starts, there are always earlier heroes and earlier tragedies.
BRIAN HERBERT & KEVIN J. ANDERSON, The Butlerian Jihad
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The ideal historian goes to the mouth of the tomb, cries: "Lazarus, come forth!" and sets him that was dead for ages, blinking and passionate, in the sun.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY, Keystones of Thought
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History is a relay of revolutions.
SAUL ALINSKY, Rules for Radicals
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