Quotes About History

A person who does not know the history of the last 3,000 years wanders in the darkness of ignorance, unable to make sense of the reality around him

There was no such thing as Palestinians…. It was not as though there was a Palestinian people… and we came and threw them out and took their country away from them. They did not exist.

One cannot and must not try to erase the past merely because it does not fit the present.

I'm sure that someday children in schools will study the history of the men [sic] who made war as you study an absurdity. They'll be shocked, just as today we're shocked with cannibalism.

There is no Zionism except the rescue of Jews.

Come to think of it, I am more than a little tired of hearing about how the Jews 'stole' land from Arabs in Palestine. The facts are quite different. A lot of good money changed hands, and a lot of Arabs became very rich indeed.

The British went on fighting like lions against the Germans, the Italians, and the Japanese, but they couldn't or wouldn't stand up to the Arabs at all – though much of the Arab world was openly pro-Nazi.

Yet for my part, deeply as I am moved by the religious architecture of the Middle Ages, I cannot honestly say that I ever felt the slightest emotion in any modern Gothic church.

There is something almost sacred about a great library because it represents the preservation of the wisdom, the learning, and the pondering of men and women of all the ages, accumulated under one roof.

It is both revealing and invigorating to occasionally set aside the worries of life, seek the company of a friendly book and mingle with the great of the earth, counsel with the wise of all time, look into the unlived days with prophets...To become acquainted with real nobility as it walks the pages of history and science and literature is to strengthen character and develop life in its finer meanings.

I will never get over being thankful to them; I hope that you never get over being thankful to them. I hope that we will always remember them....Let us read again and again, and read to our children or our children's children, the accounts of those who suffered so much.

Rock Creek is sacred and holy ground. How tremendous their heroism in the face of odds that are almost impossible to understand. . . in terms of self-sacrifice, in terms of courage, in terms of faith, in terms of facing up to adversity, there is no greater example in the history of this nation. . . We have a great inheritance. . . a tremendous responsibility to live up to it. God bless us to be faithful, to be true to that which meant so much to those who died here. . .

In 1956 the Eisenhower administration used its creditor powers to pressure Britain to withdraw from the Suez Canal and hand it over to Egypt. The U.S. is in danger of giving similar power to China.8

Historians must, of course, present both sides of the argument, but they do not have to be neutral. I hope that I have treated the facts, as far as they can be determined with accuracy, as sacred, but I cannot hide my conviction

great mysteries that the Poles have been able to keep their language, culture and religion alive despite inhabiting an area which has usually belonged to either Germany, Russia or Austria, or sometimes to all three.

Let the past serve the present, let foreign things serve China," said that famous servant of the people Mao Zedong.

History does repeat itself, but must it do so so frequently?

History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake. —JAMES JOYCE

It had all the elements needed for an industrial revolution centuries before it would occur in Europe. Yet, for one reason or another, China stumbled. Why did the world's dominant civilization falter on the verge of an even more glorious future? It is one of the greatest mysteries of history, and scholars will ponder the question for years to come.

For China, yesterday poisons today and robs tomorrow.

History is littered with the wars which everybody knew would never happen," said British politician Enoch Powell.

More blood's been spilled by the militant adherents of prophets of change than by any other group of people down through the history of man.

We're painted savages, nothing more, in spite of what we like to think of as some thousands of years of civilization. Only our present paint's called clothing and our caves called buildings

they're blinded by the limited focus of their attitudes toward time and history. They only look as far as their own lifetime. No, they don't even look that far. They only look at how things are for their own generation.