quotations about history
History, we know, is apt to repeat itself, and to foist very old incidents upon us with only a slight change of costume.
GEORGE ELIOT
Janet's Repentance
The history of the race is but that of the individual "writ large".
GEORGE HENRY LEWES
The Foundations of a Creed
History is only time furnished with dates and rich with events.
RIVAROL
attributed, Day's Collacon
History, like God, is watching what we do.
BONO
remarks at National Prayer Breakfast, Feb. 2, 2006
All you have learned from history is old ways of making mistakes. There is nothing that history can tell you about what we must do tomorrow. Only what we must not do.
EDWIN H. LAND
address to Polaroid Corporation employees at Symphony Hall in Boston, February 5, 1960
History is nothing but assisted and recorded memory.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
The Life of Reason
The history that most abounds in important incidents, soonest assumes the aspect of antiquity.
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER
The Deerslayer
It is sometimes very hard to tell the difference between history and the smell of skunk.
REBECCA WEST
Black Lamb and Grey Falcon
There are singular moments in history, dates that divide all that goes before from all that comes after.
GEORGE H. W. BUSH
State of the Union Address, Jan. 31, 1990
I have a hard time with historians because they idolize the truth.
BOYD K. PACKER
Faithful History
History is on every occasion the record of what one age finds worthy of note in another.
JACOB BURCKHARDT
Judgements on History and Historians
He who thoroughly understands the present epoch, must have reproduced, and lived through, in his private experience, all the religions, dispensations, and civilizations that preceded it.
WILLIAM BATCHELDER GREENE
Remarks on the Science of History
History is written by the victors, but it's victims who write the memoirs.
CAROL TAVRIS & ELLIOT ARONSON
Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me)
A good knowledge of things past is an armour against events to come.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
History shows that there are no invincible armies and that there never have been.
JOSEPH STALIN
radio address, July 3, 1941
Construed as a means instead of an end, history is the weapon with which we defend the future against the past.
LEWIS H. LAPHAM
Lapham's Quarterly, 2008
I'm interested in the way in which the past affects the present and I think that if we understand a good deal more about history, we automatically understand a great more about contemporary life.
TONI MORRISON
Time interview, Jan. 21, 1998
The charm of history and its enigmatic lesson consist in the fact that, from age to age, nothing changes and yet everything is completely different.
ALDOUS HUXLEY
The Devils of Loudun
All true histories contain instruction; though, in some, the treasure may be hard to find, and when found, so trivial in quantity that the dry, shrivelled kernel scarcely compensates for the trouble of cracking the nut.
ANNE BRONTE
Agnes Grey
The ideal historian goes to the mouth of the tomb, cries: "Lazarus, come forth!" and sets him that was dead for ages, blinking and passionate, in the sun.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought