Quotes About History

Those who become mentally ill often have a history of chronic pain.

I would rather have a German division in front of me than a French one behind me.

This is a place built to store books, by people who wanted to preserve books, and used by people who want to read those books. I am not alone.

Belgium always seems to get invaded, fall prey to meteorites or get infested by alien fungus or something . . .

What is written can be erased, alas.

All libraries are a gateway into other worlds, including the past—and the future.

There is no such thing as genuine truth, only received truth. The winners write the history books in all cultures, as it serves their advantage. Parents tell their children the stories which paint them as heroes. Enlightened self-interest is the best that anyone can hope for.

The Deep South has a completely different history, both good and bad, that is fascinating for everybody. It makes people work together who usually don't, and that sounds like a cliche in so many ways, but it actually happened... and it happened because of a beautiful idea.

that crazy Hitler guy in Germany who doesn't want Jewish people to compete in the Olympics.

Xander, have you ever googled "Mayflower" and "Billingtons"? Because I did. And it turns out one of your ancestors almost blew up the ship. And another one got hanged for murder after they landed in America. Ed. Note: 100% TRUE (you can google this)

never, ever compare anybody to that particular person, since he was so much more evil than anyone else in history

The Circus Circus is what the whole hep world would be doing on Saturday night if the Nazis had won the war.

Man is an historical animal, with a deep sense of his own past; and if he cannot integrate the past by a history explicit and true, he will integrate it by a history implicit and false.

Much of Australia's history had been shaped by the contradiction that it depended intimately and comprehensively on a country which was further away that almost any other in the world. Now the dependence had slackened, the distance had diminished. The Antipodes were drifting, though where they were drifting no one knew.

The rush of events in the Soviet Union, Germany, eastern Europe and China in the late 1980s and the very early 1990s had no parallel in modern history. During the last thousand years no other formidable empire in a time of comparative peace had been dissolved so quickly, so unexpectedly, as the Soviet Union.

Christianity probably has been the most important institution in the world in the last 2000 years. It has achieved more for western civilisation than has any other factor; it has helped far more people than it has harmed.

If we disown history we are at its mercy. To have a reasonable knowledge of the past is to possess an anchor which is likely to prevent us from being swept towards false ideas about the present and future.

Democracy is a freak condition in the world's history: civil liberties are not common liberties even today, and most people in the world have never possessed them.

War and peace are not separate compartments. Peace depends on threats and force; often peace is the crystallisation of past force.

One lesson of history is that every gain has its potential loss. The highest human achievements carry the danger of pride, and pride can lead blindly to disaster, just as failure can fortify the determination and so lead slowly towards triumph.

For eighty years convicts had been shipped to Australia, and a total of 163000 had set out on that voyage from which few returned. In the modern history of Europe there was rarely a planned deportation on a more ambitious scale until the era of Stalin and Hitler.

The argument by white and black Australians that the events of 1788 are primarily to blame for the plight of many Aborigines is far too negative. The solutions which have been proposed — massive land rights, white confessions of guilt and the granting of hereditary privileges to Aborigines — essentially look backwards. Moreover, the solutions are based on a version of history which is much less valid than its exponents believe.

The history of Australia, black or white, is not only the struggle between peoples but the struggle between nature and people. Nature tamed many of the settlers, sometimes defeating them, but people held many victories, sometimes at high cost.

Why did nations turn so often to war in the belief that it was a sharp and quick instrument for shaping international affairs when again and again the instrument had proved to be blunt or unpredictable? This recurring optimism is a vital prelude to war. Anything which increases the optimism is a cause of war. Anything which dampens that optimism is a cause of peace.