History Quotes

History is fables agreed upon.

Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire

The very ink with which history is written is merely fluid prejudice.

Mark Twain

An honest election, under democracy, is an act of innocence which does not take place more than once in the history of a given nation.

Jose Marie Gil Robles, speech in Madrid, 1933

History is the unfolding of miscalculation.

Barbara Tuchman

The history of every country begins in the heart of a man or woman.

Willa Sibert Cathe

If you will protest courageously, and yet with dignity and Christian love, when the history books are written in future generations, the historians will have to pause and say, There lived a great people - A black people - who injected new meaning and dignity into the veins of civilization.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

From the beginning of our history the country has been afflicted with compromise. It is by compromise that human rights have been abandoned. I insist that this shall cease. The country needs repose after all its trials; it deserves repose. And repose can only be found in everlasting principles.

Charles Sumne

Strike from mankind the principle of faith and men would have no more history than a flock of sheep.

Mark Beltaire

History is the ship carrying living memories to the future.

Stephen Spende

No man is truly great, who is great only in his life - Time. The test of greatness is the page of history.

William Hazlitt, on the Pleasure of Hating

People that are really weird can get into sensitive positions and have a tremendous impact on history.

Dan Quayle, 09/88

The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments.

William H. Borah

I respect every soldier, from every country, who serves beside us in the hard work of history. America is grateful, and America will not forget.

George W. Bush, September 2, 2004, The Republican National Convention, N. Y.

History does not repeat itself except in the minds of those who do not know history.

Kahlil Gibran

Social history might be defined negatively as the history of a people with the politics left out.

G. M. Trevelyan

History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, however, if faced with courage, need not be lived again.

Maya Angelou

For my part, I consider that it will be found much better by all parties to leave the past to history, especially as I propose to write that history myself.

Sir Winston Churchill

History balances the frustration of how far we have to go with the satisfaction of how far we have come. It teaches us tolerance for the human shortcomings and imperfections which are not uniquely of our generation, but of all time.

Lewis F. Powell, Jr.

Well - Behaved women rarely make history.

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the bible is filled, it would seem more consistent that we called it the word of a demon than the Word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind.

Thomas Paine, "The Age of Reason".

I cannot join the space program and restart my life as an astronaut, but this opportunity to connect my abilities as an educator with my interests in history and space is a unique opportunity to fulfill my early fantasies.

Christa McAuliffe

Let us resolve to be masters, not the victims, of our history, controlling our own destiny without giving way to blind suspicions and emotions.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy

Natural selection, as it has operated in human history, favors not only the clever but the murderous.

Barbara Ehrenreich

Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill.

Barbara Tuchman

History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon.

Napoleon Bonaparte

Any movement in history which attempts to perpetuate itself, becomes reactionary.

Marshal Tito

If the past cannot teach the present and the father cannot teach the son, then history need not have bothered to go on, and the world has wasted a great deal of time.

Russell Hoban

History is full of surprises.

Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.

Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime therefore, we must be saved by hope. Nothing true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history therefore, we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone therefore, we are saved by love.

Reinhold Niebuh

In the South of California has gathered the larges and most miscellaneous assortment of Messiahs, Sorcerers, Saints and Seers known to the history of aberrations.

Farnsworth Crowde

History teaches us that when a barbarian race confronts a sleeping culture, the barbarian always wins.

Arnold J. Toynbee

Those who don? t build must burn. It? s as old as history and juvenile delinquence.

Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention in human history, with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila.

Mitch Ratcliffe

While history is much more than a record of magnified personal encounters, it also remains rooted in individual personalities.

Bernard Weisberger, America Afire

Not only the studying and writing of history but also the honoring of it both represent affirmations of a certain defiant faith - A desperate, unreasoning faith, if you will - But faith nevertheless in the endurance of this threatened world - Faith in the total essentiality of historical continuity.

George Frost Kennan

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

History is a nightmare from which we are trying to awaken.

James Joyce