Historian Quotes - Page 2

• Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

  Winston Churchill

  Inspirational, Life, Graduation

  Speech at Mansion House, London, 10 Nov. 1942.

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• History must speak for itself. A historian is content if he has been able to shed more light.

  William L. Shirer

  Light, Able, Speak

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• There's certainly more new SF available than when I started writing. That means there's also more bad SF available. Whether there is also more good is a matter for future historians of the field.

  Alan Dean Foster

  Writing, Mean, Matter

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• History is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.

  Edward Gibbon

  War, History, Tourism

  'The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' (1776-88) ch. 3.

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• Historians are like deaf people who go on answering questions that no one has asked them.

  Leo Tolstoy

  Funny, Humor, History

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• People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.

  Edmund Burke

  Inspirational, Family, Memories

  Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

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• Few will have the greatness to bend history itself; but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total; of all those acts will be written the history of this generation.

  Robert Kennedy

  Change, Courage, Creativity

  Robert F. Kennedy (1998). “Make Gentle the Life of the World: The Vision of Robert F. Kennedy”, Harcourt

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

  Ambrose Bierce

  Lying, History, Soldier

  Cynic's Word Book (1906) p. 161

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• History - an account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant

  John Barth

  History, Knaves, Events

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• The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.

  L.P. Hartley

  Country, Memories, Future

  "The Go-Between". Book by L.P. Hartley, 1953.

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• The historian must have some conception of how men who are not historians behave.

  Edward Gibbon

  Men, History, Behave

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• Governments have never learned anything from history, or acted on principles deducted from it.

  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

  Peace, War, Philosophical

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• 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.

  Winston Churchill

  Art, Writing, Past

  Speech in House of Commons, 23 Jan. 1948

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• From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.

  Winston Churchill

  War, Iron, History

  Address at Westminster College, Fulton, Mo., 5 Mar. 1946.

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• Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour.'

  Winston Churchill

  War, Men, Years

  Speech in House of Commons, 18 June 1940

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• I am fond of pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.

  Winston Churchill

  Funny, Life, Leadership

  Speech at the Reform Club, April 28, 1981.

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• A generation which ignores history has no past — and no future.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Future, Past, History

  Robert A. Heinlein (1987). “Time Enough for Love”, p.223, Penguin

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• We must be very careful not to assign this deliverance the attributes of a victory. Wars are not won by evacuations

  Winston Churchill

  War, Victory, World

  Winston Churchill (1986). “Their Finest Hour”, p.103, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The corporations plainly want academic scholarship to create a web of mystification that will avoid any public awareness of the way in which power actually functions in the society, and the faculty has caught the message and they do it magnificently.

  Noam Chomsky

  Power, Society, Want

  Noam Chomsky (2004). “Language and Politics”, p.136, AK Press

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• I mean, it’s true, nobody talks about them, but when you bring it up, the idea that you have to rent yourself to somebody and follow their orders, and that they own and you work there, and you built it but you don’t own it, that’s a highly unnatural notion. You don’t have to study any complicated theories to see that this is an attack on human dignity.

  Noam Chomsky

  Respect, Work, Mean

  Noam Chomsky (2013). “On Anarchism”, p.109, New Press, The

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• When you compare yourself with others in matters of wealth, position, and health, you should look at people less favoured than yourself. When you compare yourself with others in matters of religion, knowledge and virtue, look at people who are better than yourself.

  Ibn Hazm

  Inspirational, Wisdom, Health

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  There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power.

  Washington Irving

  Strength, Sad, Sympathy

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• The Marine Corps ... took a boy and made him a man.

  Ed Bearss

  Military, Marine, Men

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• Limitation is essential to authority. A government is legitimate only if it is effectively limited.

  Lord Acton

  Government, Political, Essentials

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• Men cannot be made good by the state, but they can easily be made bad. Morality depends on liberty.

  Lord Acton

  Men, Liberty, Morality

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