History Quotes - Page 10

• To study history means submitting to chaos and nevertheless retaining faith in order and meaning.

  Hermann Hesse

  Faith, Mean, Order

  Hermann Hesse (2002). “The Glass Bead Game: (Magister Ludi) A Novel”, p.169, Macmillan

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• Israel was born out of Jewish terrorism. Jewish terrorists hanged two British sergeants and booby-trapped their corpses.

  Gerald Kaufman

  Israel, Terrorism, States

  House of Commons Debates, publications.parliament.uk. January 15, 2009.

  32 Copy quote

  Show source

• I think that Richard Nixon will go down in history as a true folk hero, who struck a vital blow to the whole diseased concept of the revered image and gave the American virtue of irreverence and skepticism back to the people.

  William S. Burroughs

  Hero, Thinking, Blow

  William S. Burroughs (2007). “Word Virus: The William S. Burroughs Reader”, p.339, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• A lot of people think that the music was responsible for a lot of changes in the Sixties, but I think the music came out of it. The music wouldnt have happened without the social changes.

  Steve Winwood

  Change, Music, Thinking

  23 Copy quote

• When you consider that God could have commanded anything he wanted--anything!--the Ten [Commandments] have got to rank as one of the great missed moral opportunities of all time. How different history would have been had he clearly and unmistakably forbidden war, tyranny, taking over other people's countries, slavery, exploitation of workers, cruelty to children, wife-beating, stoning, treating women--or anyone--as chattel or inferior beings.

  Katha Pollitt

  God, Country, Children

  39 Copy quote

• Whosoever in writing a modern history shall follow the truth too near the heels it may haply strike out his teeth.

  Walter Raleigh

  Writing, Teeth, May

  'The History of the World' (1614) preface

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

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

  Edward Gibbon

  War, Tourism, Littles

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

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• Study history, study history. In history lie all the secrets of statecraft.

  Winston Churchill

  Lying, Secret, Study

  "Churchill By Himself".

  24 Copy quote

  Show source

• A society in stable equilibrium is-by definition-one that has no history and wants no historians.

  Henry Adams

  Definitions, Want, Equilibrium

  Henry Adams (1920). “The Degradation of the Democratic Dogma”

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• A new future requires a new past.

  Eric Foner

  Past, New Future

  Eric Foner (2003). “Who Owns History?: Rethinking the Past in a Changing World”, p.83, Macmillan

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  Evil, Deeds, Action

  Tacitus (2007). “The Annals & The Histories”, p.25, Modern Library

  24 Copy quote

  Show source

• Too many historical writers are the votaries of cults, which, by definition are dedicated to whitewashing warts and hanging halos.

  Thomas A. Bailey

  Historical, Halos, Definitions

  Thomas A. Bailey (1969). “Essays Diplomatic and Undiplomatic of Thomas A. Bailey”, p.15, Ardent Media

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it.

  Oscar Wilde

  Duty

  1891 Intentions, 'The Critic as Artist'.

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is from the numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal or acts to improve the lot of others or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.

  Robert Kennedy

  Change, Hope, Courage

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

  230 Copy quote

  Show source

• History is a jangle of accidents, blunders, surprises and absurdities, and so is our knowledge of it, but if we are to report it at all we must impose some order upon it.

  Henry Steele Commager

  Order, Surprise, Blunders

  Henry Steele Commager, Raymond Henry Muessig (1980). “The study and teaching of history”, Merrill Publishing Company

  10 Copy quote

  Show source
• 

  History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.

  James Joyce

  Truth, Trying, Nightmare

  Ulysses (1922)

  80 Copy quote

  Show source

• Sometimes it can seem that history is turning in a wide arc, toward an unknown shore. Yet the destination of history is determined by human action, and every great movement of history comes to a point of choosing.

  George W. Bush

  Movement, Determined, Action

  Fifth Presidential State of the Union Address, delivered 31 January 2006

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• History must not be written with bias, and both sides must be given, even if there is only one side.

  John Betjeman

  Sides, Given, Bias

  1952 First and Last Loves.

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• Clio may be the most austere and chaste of the Muses, but she has been known to come down informally from Mount Helicon in a mood so raffish that there are those who claim to have seen her with her slip showing.

  Thornton Willis

  May, Muse, Mood

  Willis Thornton (1992). “History: Facts and Fable”, Dorset Pr

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

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

  John Barth

  Knaves, Events, Historian

  14 Copy quote

• We study history in order to intervene in the course of history.

  Adolf von Harnack

  Order, Study, Courses

  11 Copy quote

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

  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

  Peace, War, Philosophical

  11 Copy quote

• Happy the people whose annals are tiresome.

  Baron de Montesquieu

  People, Vacant, Tiresome

  8 Copy quote

• And how fascinating history is - the long, variegated pageant of man's still continuing evolution of this strange planet, so much the most interesting of all the myriads of spinners through space.

  G. M. Trevelyan

  Men, Space, Long

  G. M. Trevelyan (2016). “History and the Reader”, p.24, Cambridge University Press

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is humiliating to remain with our hands folded while others write history. It matters little who wins. To make a people great it is necessary to send them to battle even if you have to kick them in the pants. That is what I shall do.

  Benito Mussolini

  Writing, Winning, Hands

  "Famous Lines : A Columbia Dictionary of Familiar Quotations" by Robert Andrews, (p. 330), 1997.

  30 Copy quote

  Show source