Welcome to our collection of quotes about history. We hope you enjoy pondering them! If you do, please share widely.
History repeats herself.
All our experience with history should teach us, when we look back, how badly human wisdom is betrayed when it relies on itself.
One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say.
Human history in essence is the history of ideas.
I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know no way of judging of the future but by the past.
Study the past if you would define the future.
Longer Version:
Study the past if you would define the future. I am not one who was born in the possession of knowledge; I am one who is fond of antiquity, and earnest in seeking it there. Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous.
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 no longer strong.
Every moment happens twice: inside and outside, and they are two different histories.
Skepticism is a virtue in history as well as in philosophy.
A myth is far truer than a history, for a history only gives a story of the shadows, whereas a myth gives a story of the substances that cast the shadows.
Watch the History Channel if you want it literal and historically perfect.
On human stupidity: It is one of the most powerful forces that shape history.
If it's a good idea, go ahead and do it. It's easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission.
The public history of modern art is the story of conventional people not knowing what they are dealing with.
Work hard, have fun and make history.
Patriotism ruins history.
We learn from history that we learn nothing from history.
Condemn me, it does not matter, history will absolve me.
History is merely gossip.
The historic ascent of humanity, taken as a whole, may be summarized as a succession of victories of consciousness over blind forces -- in nature, in society, in man himself.
We don't want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker's damn is the history we make today.
Anybody can make history. Only a great man can write it.
History is merely a list of surprises. It can only prepare us to be surprised yet again.
History is who we are and why we are the way we are.
Meaning is socially, historically, and rhetorically constructed.
What I am is a thinking, feeling human being compelled by history.
History should be written as philosophy.
What is history? An echo of the past in the future; a reflex from the future on the past.
The history of liberty is a history of resistance.
Optimists are usually wrong. But all the great change in history, positive change, was done by optimists.
History, in general, only informs us of what bad government is.
History can bring luck: this is what we can call optimism.
We must remember that one determined person can make a significant difference, and that a small group of determined people can change the course of history.
History passes the final judgment.
History is a relay of revolutions.
If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten.
History is the transformation of tumultuous conquerors into silent footnotes.
Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.
Fear not for the future, weep not for the past.
One little person, giving all of her time to peace, makes news. Many people, giving some of their time, can make history.
A poet in history is divine, but a poet in the next room is a joke.
The so-called lessons of history are for the most part the rationalizations of the victors. History is written by the survivors.
History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.
I love studying Ancient History and seeing how empires rise and fall, sowing the seeds of their own destruction.
History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.
We are not makers of history. We are made by history.
A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots.
A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history.
The historian is a prophet looking backward.
Revolutions are the locomotives of history.
The writer may very well serve a movement of history as its mouthpiece, but he cannot of course create it.
The history of all previous societies has been the history of class struggles.
Longer Version:
The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.
Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guildmaster and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, that each time ended, either in the revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.
I came, I saw, I conquered.
History never looks like history when you are living through it.
Longer Version:
History never looks like history when you are living through it. It always looks confusing and messy, and it always feels uncomfortable.
People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.
I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am also, much more than that. So are we all.
History is more or less bunk.
Historian: an unsuccessful novelist.
History is a race between education and catastrophe.
People who make history know nothing about history. You can see that in the sort of history they make.
Every historian discloses a new horizon.
Memoirs are the backstairs of history.
We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.
We learn from experience that men never learn anything from experience.
If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience.
The history of the past interests us only in so far as it illuminates the history of the present.
The historian will tell you what happened. The novelist will tell you what it felt like.
When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor.
Difficulty is the excuse history never accepts.
History develops, art stands still.
We must admit that history is enjoyable to a large extent because it enables us to pass judgement on the past.
If history is any indication, all truths will eventually turn out to be false.
The pull, the attraction of history, is in our human nature. What makes us tick? Why do we do what we do? How much is luck the deciding factor?
To communicate the truths of history is an act of hope for the future.
Neither the life of an individual nor the history of a society can be understood without understanding both.
I never see what has been done; I only see what remains to be done.
History has demonstrated that the most notable winners usually encountered heartbreaking obstacles before they triumphed. They won because they refused to become discouraged by their defeats.
Unlike any other time in our history, we have to know that staying in school and getting an education is the most important thing you can do.
Whatever we do or fail to do will influence the course of history.
Few characters in history are indispensable.
We are all tourists in history, and irony is what we win in wars.
False history gets made all day, any day, the truth of the new is never on the news.
Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.
History books that contain no lies are extremely dull.
History is an account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools.
History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies.
The charm of history and its enigmatic lesson consist in the fact that, from age to age, nothing changes and yet everything is completely different.
Our history is not our destiny.
To understand a science, it is necessary to know its history.
History is formed by the people, those who have power and those without power. Each one of us makes history.
I go into my library and all history unrolls before me.
Human blunders usually do more to shape history than human wickedness.
