quotations about history
History is on every occasion the record of what one age finds worthy of note in another.
JACOB BURCKHARDT
Judgements on History and Historians
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 only time furnished with dates and rich with events.
RIVAROL
attributed, Day's Collacon
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
The history of the race is but that of the individual "writ large".
GEORGE HENRY LEWES
The Foundations of a Creed
History is not a suicide note -- it is a record of our survival.
JEANETTE WINTERSON
The Stone Gods
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.
ALDOUS HUXLEY
The Devils of Loudun
A good knowledge of things past is an armour against events to come.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
History is philosophy teaching by example.
HENRY ST. JOHN BOLINGBROKE
Letters on the Study and Use of History
The people, and the people alone, are the motive force in the making of world history.
MAO ZEDONG
"On Coalition Government", Apr. 24, 1945
It is sometimes very hard to tell the difference between history and the smell of skunk.
REBECCA WEST
Black Lamb and Grey Falcon
History is nothing but assisted and recorded memory.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
The Life of Reason
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
Because the acts or events of true history have not that magnitude which satisfieth the mind of man, poesy feigneth acts and events greater and more heroical.
FRANCIS BACON
The Advancement of Learning
The best historian lies like a mirror.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
History is not fable agreed upon, but truth disagreed upon.
IVAN PANIN
Thoughts
Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.
H.G. WELLS
The Outline of History
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)
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
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