History Quotes

History is an account mostly false, of events mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools.

Ambrose Gwinett Bierce

The history of science is everywhere speculative. It is a marvelous hiatory. It makes you proud to be a human being.

Karl R. Poppe

From the totalitarian point of view, history is something to be created rather than learned.

George Orwell, Essay: "The Prevention of Literature" (1946)

Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of it. The history of liberty is a history of resistance. The history of liberty is a history of limitations of governmental power, not the increase of it.

Nadia Boulange

During the Second World War, the Germans took four years to build the Atlantic Wall. On four beaches it held up the Allies for about an hour at Omaha it held up the U. S. for less than one day. The Atlantic Wall must therefore be regarded as one of the greatest blunders in military history.

Stephen Ambrose

History is littered with the wars which everybody knew would never happen.

Enoch Powell

I bet one legend that keeps recurring throughout history, in every culture, is the story of Popeye.

Jack Handey Deep Thoughts

I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.

Thomas Jefferson

Political history is largely an account of mass violence and of the expenditure of vast resources to cope with mythical fears and hopes.

Murray Edelman, _Politics as Symbolic Action_, p. 1

Karate is a form of martial arts in which people who have had years and years of training can, using only their hands and feet, make some of the worst movies in the history of the world.

Dave Barry

More than any time in history mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to utter hopelessness and despair, the other to total extinction. Let us hope we have the wisdom to choose correctly.

Woody Allen