best quotations about
History |
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Quotations
 | History is written by the winners. — Napoleon, 1769-1821, French Emperor 46 likes |
 | To be ignorant of the past is to be forever a child. — Cicero, 106-43 BC, Roman orator & statesman 25 likes |
 | What is history but the story of how politicians have squandered the blood and treasure of the human race? — Thomas Sowell, 1930 -, American political thinker 17 likes |
| As history has also shown, especially in the twentieth century, one of the first things an ideologue will do after achieving absolute power is kill. — Thomas Sowell, 1930 -, American political thinker 13 likes |
 | Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular. — Aristotle, 384-322 BC, Ancient Greek philosopher 11 likes |
 | The only thing new in the world is the history you do not know. — Harry Truman, 1884-1972, American President [1945-1953] 10 likes |
 | Study history, study history. In history lies all the secrets of statecraft. — Winston Churchill, 1874-1965, British Prime Minister, Nobel 1953 9 likes |
 | I've always preferred mythology to history. History is truth that becomes an illusion. Mythology is an illusion that becomes reality. — Jean Cocteau, 1889-1963, French artist 9 likes |
 | Those who know nothing about history are doomed forever to repeat it. — Will Durant, 1885-1981, American historian & philosopher 9 likes |
| The South creates the civilizations, the North conquers them, ruins them, borrows from them, spreads them: this is one summary of history. — Will Durant, 1885-1981, American historian & philosopher 9 likes |
 | History shows that there are no invincible armies and that there never have been. — Joseph Stalin, 1879-1953, Soviet leader 8 likes |
 | Each time history repeats itself, the price goes up. — Anonymous 7 likes |
| History will be kind to me for I intend to write it. — Winston Churchill, 1874-1965, British Prime Minister, Nobel 1953 7 likes |
 | Clio, the muse of history, is as thoroughly infected with lies as a street whore with syphilis. — Arthur Schopenhauer, 1788-1860, German philosopher 7 likes |
 | Perhaps in time the so-called Dark Ages will be thought of as including our own. — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, 1742-1799, German author of maxims 6 likes |
| The whole history of the world is summed up in the fact that when nations are strong they are not always just, and when they wish to be just, they are often no longer strong. — Winston Churchill, 1874-1965, British Prime Minister, Nobel 1953 6 likes |
 | The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it. — Oscar Wilde, 1854-1900, Irish writer 6 likes |
 | There’s a good reason why nobody studies history, it just teaches you too much. — Noam Chomsky, 1928-, American linguist, philosopher, social activist 6 likes |
| Anybody can make history. Only a great man can write it. — Oscar Wilde, 1854-1900, Irish writer 6 likes |
 | Take the fire from the altars of the past, not the ashes. — Jean Jaures, 1859-1914, French Socialist leader 5 likes |
| Only give them history books. Men should read nothing else. — Napoleon, 1769-1821, French Emperor 5 likes |
 | History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme. — Mark Twain, 1835-1910, American writer 5 likes |
 | God alone knows the future, but only an historian can alter the past. — Ambrose Bierce, 1842–1914, American writer 5 likes |
| What then is, generally speaking, the truth of history? A fable agreed upon. — Napoleon, 1769-1821, French Emperor 4 likes |
 | Everyone who wants to know what will happen ought to examine what has happened: everything in this world in any epoch has their replicas in antiquity. — Niccolò Machiavelli, 1469-1527, Italian political philosopher 4 likes |
| History is mostly guessing, the rest is prejudice. — Will Durant, 1885-1981, American historian & philosopher 4 likes |
| Men make history, not the other way around. — Harry Truman, 1884-1972, American President [1945-1953] 4 likes |
 | Europe was created by history. America was created by philosophy. — Margaret Thatcher, 1925-2013, British Prime Minister 4 likes |
 | All history is incomprehensible without Christ. — Ernest Renan, 1823-1892, French philosopher & historian 4 likes |
 | History is only the pattern of silken slippers descending the stairs to the thunder of hobnailed boots climbing upward from below. — Voltaire, 1694-1778, French philosopher & writer 3 likes |
 | Political judgment is the ability to hear the distant hoofbeats of the horse of history. — Otto von Bismarck, 1815-1898, German chancellor 3 likes |
 | The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. — Karl Marx, 1818-1883, German philosopher 3 likes |
 | We cannot help but see Socrates as the turning-point, the vortex of world history. — Friedrich Nietzsche, 1844-1900, German philosopher 3 likes |
| Anyone who studies present and ancient affairs will easily see how in all cities and all peoples there still exist, and have always existed, the same desires and passions. — Niccolò Machiavelli, 1469-1527, Italian political philosopher 3 likes |
 | History teaches that wars begin when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap. — Ronald Reagan, 1911-2004, American President [1981-1989] 3 likes |
 | The age of antiquity is the youth of the world. — Francis Bacon, 1561-1626, English philosopher 3 likes |
 | The history of thought may be summed up in these words: it is absurd by what it seeks and great by what it finds. — Paul Valery, 1871-1945, French poet 3 likes |
 | Mankind has conceived history as a series of battles; hitherto it has considered fighting as the main thing in life. — Anton Chekhov, 1860-1904, Russian writer 3 likes |
| The Marshall Plan will go down in history as one of America's greatest contributions to the peace of the world. — Harry Truman, 1884-1972, American President [1945-1953] 3 likes |
 | Antiquity is the aristocracy of history. — Alexandre Dumas, 1802-1870, French writer 3 likes |
 | The reign of Antoninus is marked by the rare advantage of furnishing very few materials for history, which is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind. — Edward Gibbon, 1737-1794, English historian 2 likes |
 | Aristotle may be regarded as the cultural barometer of Western history. Whenever his influence dominated the scene, it paved the way for one of history's brilliant eras; whenever it fell, so did mankind. — Ayn Rand, 1905-1982, American writer & philosopher 2 likes |
 | There is properly no history; only biography. — Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803-1884, American philosopher 2 likes |
 | If a man could say nothing against a character but what he can prove, history could not be written. — Samuel Johnson, 1709-1784, English writer 2 likes |
 | Read no history: nothing but biography, for that is life without theory. — Benjamin Disraeli, 1804-1881, British Prime Minister 2 likes |
 | Holding an Olympic Games means evoking history. — Pierre de Coubertin, 1863-1937, French, father of the Olympic Games 2 likes |
| Hegel remarks somewhere that all facts and personages of great importance in world history occur, as it were, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as a tragedy, the second time as farce. — Karl Marx, 1818-1883, German philosopher 2 likes |
| The history of empires is the history of human misery. — Edward Gibbon, 1737-1794, English historian 2 likes |
 | Everybody likes a bit of gossip to some point, as long as it’s gossip with some point to it. That’s why I like history. History is nothing but gossip about the past, with the hope that it might be true. — Gore Vidal, 1925-2012, American writer 2 likes |
 | Ancient Greek history is a poem. — François-René de Chateaubriand, 1768-1848, French poet & politician 1 likes |
 | It might be a good idea if the various countries of the world would occasionally swap history books, just to see what other people are doing with the same set of facts. |
| The effect of boredom on a large scale in history is underestimated. It is a main cause of revolutions. |
 | When I look at history, I see hours of freedom and centuries of servitude. |
 | The pyramids of Egypt are the oldest libraries of mankind. |
 | A page of history is worth a volume of logic. |
 | Our ignorance of history causes us to slander our own times. |
 | That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach. |
 | Always the victor writes the history of the vanquished. He who beats distorts the faces of the beaten. The weaker depart from this world and the lies remain. |
 | If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten. |
 | No man is truly great who is great only in his lifetime. The test of greatness is the page of history. |
 | All the historical books which contain no lies are extremely tedious. |
 | Most of the great triumphs and tragedies of history are caused not by people being fundamentally good or fundamentally evil, but by people being fundamentally people. |
 | History does not merely touch on language, but takes place in it. |
| The forms of art reflect the history of man more truthfully than do documents themselves. |
 | Nature has no history. |
 | Myth is much more important and true than history. History is just journalism and you know how reliable that is. |
 | History is a constant conspiracy against the truth. — Joseph De Maistre, 1753-1821, Savoyard diplomat & philosopher |
 | A Harvard study has shown that in fifteen cases in history where a rising and an established power interacted, ten ended in war. |
| History is the memory of States. |
 | History had a slow pulse; man counted in years, history in generations. |
| The sixth pre-Christian century—the miraculous century of Buddha, Confucius and Lâo-Tse, of the Ionian philosophers and Pythagoras—was a turning point for the human species. A March breeze seemed to blow across the planet from China to Samos. |
 | The history of the world is the history of a privileged few. |
| The talent of historians lies in their creating a true ensemble out of facts which are but half true. |
| Getting its history wrong is part of being a nation. |
 | A generation which ignores history has no past —and no future. |
 | History is a constant race between invention and catastrophe. |
 | Only the history of free peoples is worth our attention; the history of men under a despotism is merely a collection of anecdotes. |
 | History teaches everything, even the future. |
 | History is only about the privileged. |
 | The essential quality of a historian is not to be able to invent. |
 | If we do not learn from history, we shall be compelled to relive it. True. But if we do not change the future, we shall be compelled to endure it. And that could be worse. |
 | The Romantic love adds to history its third dimension. |
| The wheel of fortune is a better analogy for history than the “evolution of humanity”. |
 | I found one day in school a boy of medium size ill-treating a smaller boy. I expostulated, but he replied: “The bigs hit me, so I hit the babies; that's fair.” In these words he epitomized the history of the human race. |
| An American historian cannot write history without lamenting that Providence did not consult him beforehand. |
| History – An account mostly false, of events unimportant, which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly fools. |
Funny Quotes
 | Maybe comets killed the dinosaurs, maybe they tripped and fell. What's the difference? We'll never know. We couldn't solve the Kennedy Assassination, we had films of that. Good luck with the Stegosaurus. |
Ancient Greek
 | Lucky he who was taught history. Όλβιος όστις ιστορίης έσχεν μάθησιν. — Euripides, 480-406 BC, Ancient Greek tragedian ‐ Antiope 5 likes |
| Being a woman, what can I do? How can I, alone, save myself without brother, without father, without friends? Γυνή τι δράσω; Πώς μόνη σωθήσομαι, ανάδελφος, απάτωρ, άφιλος; — Euripides, 480-406 BC, Ancient Greek tragedian ‐ Orestes 4 likes |
