quotations about history
History hath triumphed over time, which beside it nothing but eternity hath triumphed over.
WALTER RALEIGH
preface, History of the World
Each moment in history is a fleeting time, precious and unique. But some stand out as moments of beginning, in which courses are set that shape decades or centuries.
RICHARD NIXON
Inaugural Address, Jan. 20, 1969
History is not fable agreed upon, but truth disagreed upon.
IVAN PANIN
Thoughts
Every moment happens twice: inside and outside, and they are two different histories.
ZADIE SMITH
White Teeth
The historian's task is to present what actually happened. The more purely and completely he achieves this, the more perfectly has he solved this problem. A simple presentation is at the same time the primary indispensable condition of his work and the highest achievement he will be able to attain. Regarded in this way, he seems to be merely receptive and productive, not active and creative.
WILHELM VON HUMBOLDT
"The Historian's Task"
History. The more of it you have the more you have to live it. After a little while there gets to be too much of it to memorize and maybe that's when empires start to decline.
JOHN UPDIKE
Rabbit is Rich
There are singular moments in history, dates that divide all that goes before from all that comes after.
GEORGE H. W. BUSH
State of the Union Address, Jan. 31, 1990
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
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
History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors and issues.
T.S. ELIOT
Gerontion
History is a struggle between the "old" right that intended to be just and the "new" that promises to be.
REINHARD BENDIX
Truth and Ideology
History is not melodrama, even if it usually reads like that. It was real blood, not tomato catsup or the pale ectoplasm of statistics, that wet the ground at Bloody Angle and darkened the waters of Bloody Pond. It modifies our complacency to look at the blurred and harrowing old photographs -- the body of the dead sharpshooter in the Devil's Den at Gettysburg or the tangled mass in the Bloody Lane at Antietam.
ROBERT PENN WARREN
The Legacy of the Civil War
History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation.
JULIAN BARNES
The Sense of an Ending
History shows that there are no invincible armies and that there never have been.
JOSEPH STALIN
radio address, July 3, 1941
Each day is a little bit of history.
JOSé SARAMAGO
Baltasar and Blimunda
The history that most abounds in important incidents, soonest assumes the aspect of antiquity.
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER
The Deerslayer
One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us.
CARL SAGAN
The Demon-Haunted World
He who thoroughly understands the present epoch, must have reproduced, and lived through, in his private experience, all the religions, dispensations, and civilizations that preceded it.
WILLIAM BATCHELDER GREENE
Remarks on the Science of History
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
What dependence can I have on the alleged events of ancient history, when I find such difficulty in ascertaining the truth regarding a matter that has taken place only a few minutes ago, and almost in my own presence!
SIR WALTER RALEIGH
attributed, Testimony: Its Posture in the Scientific World