History Quotes - Page 9

• A nation that forgets its past can function no better than an individual with amnesia.

  David McCullough

  Past, Forget, Individual

  18 Copy quote

• I don’t know much about history, and I wouldn’t give a nickel for all the history in the world. It means nothing to me. History is more or less bunk. It's tradition. 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.

  Henry Ford

  Mean, Giving, World

  Interview with Charles N. Wheeler in 'Chicago Tribune' 25 May 1916

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Some write a narrative of wars and feats, Of heroes little known, and call the rant A history.

  William Cowper

  War, Hero, Writing

  William Cowper, Henry Stebbing (1839). “Poems with a Memoir of the Author by Henry Stebbing”, p.268

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The South creates the civilizations, the North conquers them, ruins them, borrows from them, spreads them: this is one summary of history.

  Will Durant

  Civilization, Ruins, Conquer

  Will Durant, Ariel Durant (1968). “The Lessons of History”

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• The best portraits are perhaps those in which there is a slight mixture of caricature; and we are not certain that the best histories are not those in which a little of the exaggeration of fictitious narrative is judiciously employed. Something is lost in accuracy; but much is gained in effect. The fainter lines are neglected; but the great characteristic features are imprinted on the mind forever.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Forever, Mind, Portraits

  John Morley, Thomas B. Macaulay (2016). “Machiavelli : the Founder of the Political”, p.94, Editions Le Mono

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• One of the outstanding ironies of history is the utter disregard of ranks and titles in the final judgments men pass on each other. The final estimate of men shows that history cares not an iota for the rank or title a man has borne, or the office he has held, but only the quality of his deeds and the character of his mind and heart.

  Samuel Logan Brengle

  Character, Heart, Men

  81 Copy quote

• The Spaniards are perfectly right to govern these barbarians of the New World and adjacent islands; they are in prudence, ingenuity, virtue, and humanity as inferior to the Spaniards as children are to adults and women are to men, there being as much difference between them as that between wild and cruel and very merciful persons, the prodigiously intemperate and the continent and tempered, and I daresay from apes to men

  Juan Gines de Sepulveda

  Children, Men, Differences

  52 Copy quote

• Let no-one say the past is dead, the past is all about us and within.

  Oodgeroo Noonuccal

  Past, Poetry, Aboriginal

  Oodgeroo Noonuccal, Kath Walker (1992). “The dawn is at hand: selected poems”, Marion Boyars Publishers

  64 Copy quote

  Show source

• One of the things that has to be faced is the process of waiting to change the system, how much we have got to do to find out who we are, where we have come from and where we are going.

  Ella Baker

  Waiting, African American, Who We Are

  142 Copy quote

• Disobedience, in the eyes of any one who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion.

  Oscar Wilde

  Eye, Men, Progress

  "The Soul of Man Under Socialism". Essay by Oscar Wilde, 1891.

  90 Copy quote

  Show source

• Universal history, the history of what man has accomplished in this world, is at bottom the History of the Great Men who have worked here.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Men, World, Accomplished

  Thomas Carlyle (1840). “On Heroes, Hero-worship and the Heroic in History”, p.3, CUP Archive

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• I just couldn't move. History had me glued to the seat.

  Claudette Colvin

  Moving, Glue, Civil Rights Movement

  "Before Rosa Parks, A Teenager Defied Segregation On An Alabama Bus". "All Things Considered" with Robert Siegel, www.npr.org. March 2, 2015.

  196 Copy quote

  Show source

• The early church didn’t say, ‘Look what the world is coming to!’ They said, ‘Look what has come into the world’!

  Carl F. H. Henry

  Views, Church, World

  79 Copy quote

• When the drama of history is over, Jesus Christ will stand alone on the stage. All the great figures of history ... will realize that they have been but actors in a drama produced by another.

  Helmut Thielicke

  God, Jesus, Drama

  78 Copy quote

• Sad will be the day when the American people forget their traditions and their history, and so longer remember that the country they love, the institutions they cherish, and the freedom they hope to preserve, were born from the throes of armed resistance to tyranny, and nursed in the rugged arms of fearless men.

  Roger Sherman

  Love, Sad, Country

  177 Copy quote

• 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

• The simple act of opening a bottle of wine has brought more happiness to the human race than all the collective governments in the history of earth

  Jim Harrison

  Funny, Happiness, Wine

  336 Copy quote

• The miracle drugs (neuroleptics) cause the worst plague of brain damage in medical history.

  Peter Breggin

  Miracle, Drug, Brain

  40 Copy quote

• Architecture and war are not incompatible. Architecture is war. War is architecture. I am at war with my time, with history, with all authority that resides in fixed and frightened forms.

  Lebbeus Woods

  Time, War, Architecture

  28 Copy quote

• We are living through one of the most fundamental shifts in history- a change in the actual belief structure of Western society. No economic, political, or military power can compare with the power of a change of mind. By deliberately changing their images of reality, people are changing the world.

  Willis Harman

  Change, Military, Life Changing

  60 Copy quote

• With regard to military discipline, I may safely say that no such thing existed in the Continental Army.

  Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben

  Military, Army, Discipline

  165 Copy quote

• Surrender means that the history of this heroic struggle will be written by the enemy; that our youth will be trained by Northern school teachers; will learn from Northern school books their version of the War; will be impressed by all the influences of history and education to regard our gallant dead as traitors, and our maimed veterans as fit subjects for derision.

  Patrick Cleburne

  Education, Teacher, Giving Up

  203 Copy quote

• Once I thought to write a history of the immigrants in America. Then I discovered that the immigrants were American history.

  Oscar Handlin

  Writing, Discovery, Usa

  Oscar Handlin (2002). “The Uprooted: The Epic Story of the Great Migrations That Made the American People”, p.3, University of Pennsylvania Press

  50 Copy quote

  Show source

• A revival almost always begins among the laity. The ecclesiastical leaders seldom welcome reformation. History repeats itself. The present leaders are too comfortably situated as a rule to desire innovation that might require sacrifice on their part. And God's fire only falls on sacrifice. An empty altar receives no fire!

  Frank Bartleman

  God, Christian, Fall

  82 Copy quote