Quotes About History

Invent a past for the present.

Around ten thousand years before Jesus walked the earth, humans taught themselves how to grow grains like barley and wheat, and soon after, dates, figs, and pomegranates.

Count among Washington's gifts to his future nation his revelation that cows, rather than horses or sheep, provide the most potent dung.

You are your stories. You are the product of all the stories you have heard and lived—and of many that you have never heard. They have shaped how you see yourself, the world, and your place in it.

History works on a long time scale, and at any given moment we can perceive its directions but imperfectly.

While the size of the armies was small, their casualty rates were high. Indeed, the war against Mexico has been accurately described as the deadliest that the United States has ever fought:

After the Sixteenth Congress convened in December 1819, the debate over Missouri resumed. The speeches seemed interminable as well as intemperate. When Felix Walker of North Carolina was urged to sit down, he replied that he had to give his speech for the folks back home, "for Buncombe County." Ever since, Americans have called a certain kind of inflated political oratory "buncombe"—or "bunk" for short.

Faneuil Hall, the cradle of American liberty.

I shall enter on no encomium upon Massachusetts; she needs none. There she is. Behold her, and judge for yourselves. There is her history; the world knows it by heart. The past, at least, is secure. There is Boston and Concord and Lexington and Bunker Hill; and there they will remain forever.

History is God's providence in human affairs.

Hold on, my friends, to the Constitution and to the Republic for which it stands. Miracles do not cluster and what has happened once in 6,000 years, may not happen again. Hold on to the Constitution, for if the American Constitution should fail, there will be anarchy throughout the world.

I regard it (the Constitution) as the work of the purest patriots and wisest statesman that ever existed, aided by the smiles of a benign Providence; it almost appears a "Divine interposition in our behalf... the hand that destroys our Constitution rends our Union asunder forever.

When tillage begins, other arts follow. The farmers, therefore, are the founders of human civilization.

So often, over the history of the oil industry, it is said that technology has gone about as far as it can and that the "end of the road" for the oil industry is in sight. And then, new innovations dramatically expand capabilities. This pattern would be repeated again and again.

The war against Syria was "one of the costliest covert action programs in the history of the CIA," the New York Times revealed. The CIA invested more than $1 billion in Operation Timber Sycamore, "one of the most expensive efforts to arm and train rebels since the agency's program arming the Mujahideen in Afghanistan during the 1980s.

It was the Soviet Union under Stalin that defeated Adolf Hitler, not the United States, which only intervened once Hitler was in retreat.

The hamburger was renamed the "liberty steak" and sauerkraut became "liberty cabbage.

Sam crossed to the other set of stairs and moved up them quickly. As it wasn't proper for men to see women walking up the stairs, where they might accidentally catch the view of her ankle or, heaven forbid, her calf, many of Charleston's older homes were built with two sets of stairs.

As my father once quipped, the early history of this country is the story of James Madison talking to himself.

Every family has its secrets but nothing reveals the truth like DNA

Istoriju pišu pobednici. Predanja ispreda puk. Književnici fantaziraju. Izvesna je samo smrt.

History is written by the victors. Legends are woven by the people. Writers fantasize. Only death is certain. "To Die for One's Country is Glorious," p. 131

The past was a minefield about which few maps seemed to agree. And why should that surprise me? It's a big place. p. 30

nothing in the history of mankind is ever repeated, things that at first glance seem the same are scarcely even similar; each individual is a star unto himself, everything happens always and never, all things repeat themselves ad infinitum yet are unique.