quotations about history
The history of mankind is a romance, a mask, a tragedy, constructed upon the principles of POETICAL JUSTICE; it is a noble or royal hunt, in which what is sport to the few is death to the many, and in which the spectators halloo and encourage the strong to set upon the weak, and cry havoc in the chase, though they do not share in the spoil.
WILLIAM HAZLITT
Characters of Shakespeare's Plays
History is the same thing over and over again.
WOODY ALLEN
interview, Der Spiegel, Jun. 20, 2005
What experience and history teach is this -- that people and governments never have learned anything from history or acted on the principles deduced from it.
G.W.F. HEGEL
Philosophy of History
History gets reinterpreted as time goes on. Many times, the participants are lost in the retelling of the story.
BUZZ ALDRIN
Esquire, Jan. 2003
History can come in handy. If you were born yesterday, with no knowledge of the past, you might easily accept whatever the government tells you. But knowing a bit of history--while it would not absolutely prove the government was lying in a given instance--might make you skeptical, lead you to ask questions, make it more likely that you would find out the truth.
HOWARD ZINN
You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train
Faithful, well-written history is a map, in which we trace the winding ways and manifold wonders of divine Providence.
JOHN THORNTON
Maxims and Directions for Youth
History is philosophy teaching by examples.
THUCYDIDES
The History of the Peloponnesian War
You know you're getting older when you notice that more and more history questions happened in your lifetime!
TOM WILSON
Ziggy, Jul. 3, 1999
To study history means submitting to chaos and nevertheless retaining faith in order and meaning. It is a very serious task, young man, and possibly a tragic one.
HERMANN HESSE
The Glass Bead Game
The business of the historian is with the truth of things, but he is too much under temptation to make his history interesting, to be always able to reject a fine story.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
The great historian is he that can distinguish what is done from what happens.
IVAN PANIN
Thoughts
Every historian has described the age in which he happened to write, as the worst, because he has only heard of the wickedness of other times, but has felt and seen that of his own.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
Many scholars have complained of our tendency to see history only in conflicts, but I am not convinced they are right. It is in conflict that our values are exposed.
BERNARD BECKETT
Genesis
Just as the human memory is not a passive recorder but a tool in the construction of the self, so history has never been a simple record of the past, but a means of shaping peoples.
ARTHUR C. CLARKE
The Light of Other Days
History. It has always vaguely interested him, that sinister mulch of facts our little lives grow out of before joining the mulch themselves, the fragile brown rotting layers of previous deaths.
JOHN UPDIKE
Rabbit at Rest
Any true student must realize that History has no beginning. Regardless of where a story starts, there are always earlier heroes and earlier tragedies.
BRIAN HERBERT & KEVIN J. ANDERSON
The Butlerian Jihad
History is written by the winners.
ALEX HALEY
attributed, And I Quote
History, like love, is so apt to surround her heroes with an atmosphere of imaginary brightness.
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER
The Last of the Mohicans
Old men can make war, but it is children who will make history.
RAY MERRITT
Full of Grace
History is the autobiography of a madman.
ALEXANDER HERZEN
Dr. Krupov