History Quotes - Page 4

• History is Philosophy teaching by example.

  Thucydides

  Teacher, Art, Philosophy

  Thucydides, Richard Shilleto (1872). “Thucydidis I-II: With collation of the two Cambridge mss. and the Aldine and Juntine editions. By Richard Shilleto”, p.28

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• 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.

  Robert Penn Warren

  Inspirational, Motivational, Historical

  Cleanth Brooks, Robert Penn Warren, James A. Grimshaw (1998). “Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren: A Literary Correspondence”, p.15, University of Missouri Press

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• Historian: an unsuccessful novelist.

  H. L. Mencken

  Historical, Novelists, Unsuccessful

  "A Mencken Chrestomathy". Book by H. L. Mencken, 1949.

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• People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.

  James A. Baldwin

  Wisdom, People, Trapped

  "Justice at last?" by Gary Younge, www.theguardian.com. June 5, 2005.

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• Events in the past may be roughly divided into those which probably never happened and those which do not matter.

  William Ralph Inge

  Sarcastic, Wise, Sarcasm

  William Ralph Inge (1929). “Assessments and Anticipations”, Cassell

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• History books that contain no lies are extremely dull.

  Anatole France

  Lying, Book, Literature

  "The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard". Book by Anatole France, 1881.

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• We used to root for the Indians against the cavalry, because we didn't think it was fair in the history books that when the cavalry won it was a great victory, and when the Indians won it was a massacre.

  Dick Gregory

  Book, Thinking, Roots

  Dick Gregory, Robert Lipsyte (1990). “Nigger”, p.39, Simon and Schuster

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• When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall... think of it, always.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Inspirational, Motivational, Sad

  "Fictional character: Mahatma Gandhi". "Gandhi", 1982.

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• God alone knows the future, but only an historian can alter the past.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Past, Historian, Knows

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• Those who don't remember the past are condemned to repeat the eleventh grade.

  James W. Loewen

  Past, Infancy Is, Progress

  James W. Loewen (2013). “Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong”, p.16, The New Press

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• The same political parties which now agitiate the US have existed through all time. And in fact the terms of whig and tory belong to natural as well as to civil history. They denote the temper and constitution and mind of different individuals.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Party, Political, Mind

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• There is an ancient Indian saying that something lives only as long as the last person who remembers it. My people have come to trust memory over history. Memory, like fire, is radiant and immutable while history serves only those who seek to control it, those who douse the flame of memory in order to put out the dangerous fire of truth. Beware these men for they are dangerous themselves and unwise. Their false history is written in the blood of those who might remember and of those who seek the truth.

  Floyd Red Crow Westerman

  Life, Truth, Memories

  "Fictional character: Albert Hosteen". "The X-Files", (1993–2002, 2016–18), Season 3. The Blessing Way [3.01], September 22, 1995.

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• Also, what mountains of dead ashes, wreck and burnt bones, does assiduous pedantry dig up from the past time and name it History.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Past, Names, Mountain

  Thomas Carlyle (1843). “Past and Present”, p.36

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• The middle sort of historians (of which the most part are) spoil all; they will chew our meat for us.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Meat, Middle, Historian

  Michel de Montaigne (1850). “Works, Comprising His Essays, Letters, and Journey Through Germany and Italy: With Notes from All the Commentators, Biographical and Bibliographical Notices &c., &c”, p.217

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• History fades into fable; fact becomes clouded with doubt and controversy; the inscription molders from the tablet: the statue falls from the pedestal. Columns, arches, pyramids, what are they but heaps of sand; and their epitaphs, but characters written in the dust?

  Washington Irving

  Fall, Character, Dust

  Washington Irving (2006). “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Other Stories From the Sketch Book”, p.144, Penguin

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• Democratic nations must try to find ways to starve the terrorist and the hijacker of the oxygen of publicity on which they depend.

  Margaret Thatcher

  Military, Oxygen, Hymns

  Speech to American Bar Association in London, 15 July 1985, in The Times 16 July 1985

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• 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.

  Niccolo Machiavelli

  Inspirational, Motivational, Passion

  Niccolo Machiavelli (2017). “The Prince”, p.222, Race Point Publishing

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• Want of foresight, unwillingness to act when action would be simple and effective, lack of clear thinking, confusion of counsel until the emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong - these are the features which constitute the endless repetition of history.

  Winston Churchill

  Simple, Thinking, Self

  Winston Churchill, Robert Rhodes James (1980). “Churchill speaks: Winston S. Churchill in peace and war : collected speeches, 1897-1963”, Atheneum

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• The lack of a sense of history is the damnation of the modern world.

  Robert Penn Warren

  Damnation, World, Modern

  "Vision and Leadership in Sustainable Development". Book by Chris Maser, 1999.

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• History is the short trudge from Adam to atom.

  Leonard Louis Levinson

  Atoms, Adam

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• It's so damned humiliating.

  Mark Twain

  Humiliating

  Mark Twain, William Dean Howells, Albert Bigelow Paine (2014). “The Mark Twain Autobiography + 3 Biographies: 4 Mark Twain Biographies In 1 Book: Chapters From My Autobiography By Mark Twain + My Mark Twain By William Dean Howells’ + Mark Twain A Biography By Albert Bigelow Paine + The Boys’ Life Of Mark Twain By Albert Bigelow Paine”, p.305, e-artnow

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• Indeed, history is nothing more than a tableau of crimes and misfortunes.

  Voltaire

  Crime, Dump, Tableau

  L'Ingenu ch. 10 (1767) See Gibbon 4

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• History is always written wrong, and so always needs to be rewritten.

  George Santayana

  Writing History, Needs, Historian

  George Santayana (2015). “The Life of Reason: Human Understanding”, p.378, 谷月社

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• History is a great dust heap.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Dust

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• Statutes authorizing unreasonable searches were the core concern of the framers of the 4th Amendment.

  Sandra Day O'Connor

  Amendments, Framers, Concern

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