Great Quotes About History
Historical sense and poetic sense should not, in the end, be contradictory,
for if poetry is the little myth we make, history is the big myth we live,
and in our living, constantly remake. |
| History does not repeat itself. The historians repeat one another. Max Beerbohm |
To know the truth of history is to realize its ultimate myth and its
inevitable ambiguity. |
[A] ny fool can make history, but it takes a genius to write it. |
Do not applaud me. It is not I who speaks to you, but history which speaks
through my mouth. |
History must be written of, by and for the survivors. |
History consists of a series of accumulated imaginative inventions. |
The history of states and nations has provided some income for historiographers
and book dealers, but I know no other purpose it may have served. |
Clio, the muse of history, is as thoroughly infected with lies as a street
whore with syphilis. |
| History, history! We fools, what do we know or care. William Carlos Williams |
| History is now strictly organized, powerfully disciplined,
but it possesses only a modest educational value and even less conscious
social purpose. J. H. Plumb |
| [History] may be called, more generally still, the Message, verbal or
written, which all Mankind delivers to everyman. Thomas Carlyle |
| History is a science, no more and no less. J. B. Bury |
| The past is always a rebuke to the present. Robert Penn Warren |
| A country without a memory is a country of madmen. George Santayana |
| History is interim reports issued periodically. Anonymous |
| Imagination plays too important a role in the writing
of history, and what is imagination but the projection of the author's personality. Pieter Geyl |
| History is philosophy teaching by example and also by warning. Lord Bolingbroke |
| History teaches everything including the future. Lamartine |
| If you would understand anything, observe its beginning and
its development. Aristotle |
| With the historian it is an article of
faith that knowledge of the past is a key to understanding the present. Kenneth Stampp |
| History is something that happens to other people. Anonymous |
| Any time gone by was better. Jorge Manrique |
| There is no history of mankind, there is only an indefinite
number of histories of all kinds of aspects of human life. Karl Popper |
| The deepest, the only theme of human history,
compared to which all others are of subordinate importance, is the conflict
of skepticism with faith. Goethe |
| History is not melodrama, even if it usually reads like that. Robert Penn Warren |
| Who does not know that the first law of
historical writing is the truth. Cicero |
| History has become more important than ever because
of the to unprecedented ability of the historical sciences to take in man's
life on earth as a whole. Alfred Kazin |
| The certainty of history seems to be in direct inverse
ratio to what we know about it. Anonymous |
| God alone knows the future, but only an historian can alter the .past. Ambrose Bierce |
| History is ultimately more important than its singers. Michael Harrington |
| Whoever wishes to foresee the future must consult the past; for human
events ever resemble those of preceding times. This arises from the fact
that they are produced by men who ever have been, and ever shall be, animated
by the same passions, and thus they necessarily have the same results. Machiavelli |
| Writing intellectual history is like trying
to nail jelly to the wall. William Hesseltine |
| History is the memory of things said and done. Carl L. Becker |
| History is life; he who has
not lived, or has lived only enough to write a doctoral dissertation, is
too inexperienced with life to write good history. Louis Gottschalk |
History cannot give us a program for the future, but it can give us a
fuller understanding of ourselves, and of our common humanity, so that
we can better face the future. |
| There will always be a connection
between the way men Late the past and the way in which they contemplate
the present. Buckle |
| History is the enactment of ritual on a permanent and universal
stage; and its perpetual commemoration. Norman O. Brown |
| The historian must not try
to know what is truth, if he values his honesty; for if he cares for his
truths, he is certain to falsify his facts. Henry Adams |
| History is always written wrong, and so always needs to be
rewritten. George Santayana |
| What else can history teach us? Only the
vanity of believing we can impose our theories on history. Any philosophy
which asserts that human experience repeats itself is ineffectual. Jacques Ellul |
| History is not the accumulation of events of every kind which
happened in the past. It is the science of human societies. Fustel de Coulanges |
| History is filled with the sound of silken
slippers going downstairs and wooden shoes coming up. Voltaire |
| History has to be rewritten because history is the selection of those
threads of causes or antecedents that we are interested in. O. W. Holmes, Jr. |
| The researches of many eminent antiquarians have already
thrown much darkness on the subject; and it is possible, if they continue
their labors, that we shall soon know nothing at all. Artemus Ward |
| Nothing capable of being memorized is history. R. G. Collingwood |
| A society in stable equilibrium is-by definition-one
that ha~ no history and wants no historians. Henry Adams |
| It should be known that history is a discipline that has a great number
of approaches. Ibn Khalduin of Tunis |
| When a historian enters into metaphysics he has gone
to a far country from whose bourne he will never return a historian. Shailer Mathews |
| A man rising in the world is not concerned with history; he is too busy
making it. But a citizen with a fixed place in the community wants to acquire
a glorious past just as he acquires antique furniture. By that past he is
reassured of his present importance; in it he finds strength to face the
dangers that lie in front of him. Malcolm Cowley |
| We investigate the past not to deduce practical political
lessons, but to find out what really happened. T. F. Tout |
| That generations of historians have resorted to what might be called "proof
by haphazard quotation" does not make the procedure valid or reliable;
it only makes it traditional. Lee Benson |
| The past does not influence me; I influence it. Willem De Kooning |
| Very deep, very deep is the well of the past. Should we not
call it bottomless? Thomas Mann |
| Nothing falsifies history more than logic. Guizot |
| History is a great deal closer to poetry than is generally
realised: in truth, I think, it is in essence the same. A. L. Rowse |
| I said there was but one solitary thing about the past
worth remembering, and that was the fact that it is past-can't be restored.
Mark Twain |
| History is a myth that men agree to believe. Napoleon |
| To converse with historians is to keep good company;
many of them were excellent men, and those who were not, have taken care
to appear such in their writings. Lord Bolingbroke |
| History is the distillation of rumour. Thomas Carlyle |
| It is the essence of the poor that they
do not appear in history. Anonymous |
| As history stands, it is a sort of Chinese play, without end andl without
lesson. With these impressions I wrote the last line of my History, asking
for a round century before going further. Henry Adams |
| This I regard as history's highest function, to let
no worthy action be uncommemorated, and to hold out the reprobation of posterity
as a terror to evil words and deeds. Tacitus |
| I don't believe the truth will ever be known, and I have a great contempt
for history. Gen. George Meade |
| History is the essence of innumerable biographies. Thomas Carlyle |
| If the past has been an obstacle and a burden, knowledge of the past is
the safest and the surest emancipation. Lord Acton |
| History is the invention of historians. Attributed to Napoleon |
| "History" is a Greek word which means, literally, just "investigation." Arnold Toynbee |
| History will die if not irritated. The only service
I can do to my profession is to serve as a flea. Henry Adams |
| Myth, memory, history-these are three alternative ways to capture and
account for an elusive past, each with its own persuasive claim. Warren I. Susman |
| Inertia is the first law of history, as it is of physics. Morris R. Cohen |
| The past does not repeat itself, but it rhymes. Mark Twain |
| [History is] little else than a long succession of useless
cruelties. Voltaire |
| Man in a word has no nature; what he has. ..is history. Jose Ortega y Gasset |
| In mass societies, myth takes the place of history. William Bosenbrook |
| History is a great dust heap. Thomas Carlyle |
| [History is] little more than the register of the crimes,
follies and misfortunes of mankind. Edward Gibbon |
| History is not a science; it is a method. Charles Seignobos |
| All modern wars start in the history classroom. Anonymous |
| History is the self-consciousness of humanity. Droyson |
| It is very hard to remember that events
now long in the past were once in the future. Maitland |