History Quotes - Page 3

• The disadvantage of men not knowing the past is that they do not know the present.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Wisdom, Past, Men

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• Our historic imagination is at best slightly developed. We generalise and idealise the past egregiously. We set up little toys to stand as symbols for centuries and the complicated lives of countless individuals.

  John Dewey

  Past, Imagination, Littles

  John Dewey (1970). “Characters and events: popular essays in social and political philosophy”

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• Civilization is not inherited; it has to be learned and earned by each generation anew; if the transmission should be interrupted for one century, civilization would die, and we should be savages again.

  Will Durant

  Civilization, Savages, Generations

  Will Durant, Ariel Durant (1968). “The lessons of history”, Simon & Schuster

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• Life is not simple, and therefore history, which is past life, is not simple.

  David Shannon

  Past, Simple, Life Is

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• If one could make alive again for other people some cobwebbed skein of old dead intrigues and breathe breath and character into dead names and stiff portraits. That is history to me!

  G. M. Trevelyan

  Character, Names, People

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• To study history is to study literature.

  Robert Aris Willmott

  Literature, Study

  Robert Aris Willmott (1907). “Pleasures of Literature”

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• If the past has been an obstacle and a burden, knowledge of the past is the safest and the surest emancipation.

  Lord Acton

  Past, Obstacles, Burden

  Lord Acton (2016). “Lectures on Modern History: Great Event”, p.4, VM eBooks

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• A warlike nation like the Germans, without either cities, letters, arts, or money, found some compensation for this savage state in the enjoyment of liberty. Their poverty secured their freedom, since our desires and our possessions are the strongest fetters of despotism.

  Edward Gibbon

  Art, Cities, Desire

  Edward Gibbon (1854). “The history of the decline and fall of the Roman empire, with notes by Milman and Guizot. Ed. by W. Smith”, p.359

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• History is written by the winners.

  Napoleon Bonaparte

  Winner, Written

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

  Thomas Jefferson

  Love, Inspirational, Graduation

  Thomas Jefferson, Joyce Appleby, Terence Ball (1999). “Jefferson: Political Writings”, p.53, Cambridge University Press

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• There is properly no history, only biography.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Funny Life, Historical, Biographies

  Essays "History" (1841)

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• Histories are as perfect as the Historian is wise, and is gifted with an eye and a soul.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Wise, Eye, Perfect

  Oliver Cromwell, Thomas Carlyle (1857). “Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches: With Elucidations”, p.6

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• History: A distillation of rumor.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Rumor, Distillation

  Thomas Carlyle (1857). “The French Revolution: a History: In Three Parts: I. the Bastille; II. the Constitution; III. the Guillotine : in Two Volumes”, p.200

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• On the breast of that huge Mississippi of falsehood called History, a foam-bell more or less is no consequence.

  Matthew Arnold

  Foam, Bells, Breasts

  Matthew Arnold (1962). “Lectures and Essays in Criticism”, p.529, University of Michigan Press

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• The main thing is to make history, not to write it.

  Otto von Bismarck

  Military, Writing, Making History

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• Anybody can make history; only a great man can write it.

  Oscar Wilde

  Writing, Greatness, Men

  Intentions "The Critic as Artist" pt. 1 (1891)

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• The only thing that does not change is that at any and every time it appears that there have been great changes.

  Marcel Proust

  Doe, Great Change, Has Beens

  Marcel Proust (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Marcel Proust (Illustrated)”, p.851, Delphi Classics

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• A truly American sentiment recognizes the dignity of labor and the fact that honor lies in honest toil.

  Grover Cleveland

  Inspirational Life, Lying, Patriotic

  Grover Cleveland (1909). “Addresses, State Papers and Letters”

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• History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.

  Winston Churchill

  Inspirational, Positive, Badass

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• It was the evidence from science and history that prompted me to abandon my atheism and become a Christian.

  Lee Strobel

  Faith, Christian, Atheist

  Twitter post from Mar 20, 2017

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• History is a pack of lies about events that never happened told by people who weren't there.

  George Santayana

  Fear, Lying, People

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• In astronomy, the law of gravitation is plainly better worth knowing than the position of a particular planet on a particular night, or even on every night throughout a year. There are in the law a splendour and simplicity and sense of mastery which illuminate a mass of otherwise uninteresting details. But in history the matter is far otherwise. Historical facts, many of them, have an intrinsic value, a profound interest on their own account, which makes them worthy of study, quite apart from any possibility of linking them together by means of causal laws.

  Bertrand Russell

  Mean, Science, Night

  "On History". The Independent Review 3, pp. 207-215, users.drew.edu. July 1904.

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• History is more or less bunk.

  Henry Ford

  Life, Bunk

  Quoted in Chicago Tribune, 25 May 1916

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• The historian amputates reality.

  Gaetano Salvemini

  Reality, Historian

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• The Jews were destroying both Greeks and Romans. They ate the flesh of their victims, made belts for themselves out of their entrails, and daubed themselves with their blood... In all, 220,000 men perished in Cyrene and 240,000 in Cyprus, and for this reason no Jew may set foot in Cyprus today.

  Cassius Dio

  Men, Rome, Blood

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