Quotes About History

...the historian must serve two masters, the past and the present. And while his obligation to the past, his complete, unassailable fidelity to it, must always claim his first loyalty, he must accept the fact that the choices he makes as a historian are not of consequence to him alone, but will affect the moral sense, perhaps the wisdom of his generation.

The real history does not get written, because it is not in people's brains but in their nerves and vitals.

No volume of history is insignificant, even the worst chapters. Especially the worst chapters.

A cross-section of our society to-day represents the entire geological formation of human nature for 40,000 years. We need but look on the faces of the men about us as we go down the street. All history is here this minute.

History is not a series of causeless consequences. Event follows event in time, as minute follows minute in the day.

History is Force dressed up.

Then, Sir, you would reduce all history to no better than an almanack, a mere chronological series of remarkable events.

If you think you have it tough, read history books.

The longer you can look back, the farther you can look forward.

People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.

History is gossip well told.

...all histories, which are a kind of distilled newspapers...

Perhaps we are yet too near the great events of which this act formed so conspicuous a part, to understand its deep significance and to foresee its far-off consequences. The lesson of history is rarely learned by the actors themselves, especially when they read it by the fierce and dusky light of war, or amid the deeper shadows of those sorrows which war brings to both.

...the snail trail of history...

History in general only informs us what bad government is.

The study of history is the playground of patriotism, and we may easily imagine the difficulties of Boards of Education in finding books of history which will be true to fact and will also give no offence to the varied elements of the population of the United States.

History is stained with the bloody ink of truth — beware historians who whitewash.

History is the action and reaction of these two,— Nature and Thought;— two boys pushing each other on the curb-stone of the pavement.

The game of history is usually played by the best and the worst over the heads of the majority in the middle.

History is a tattoo of a moment in time.

I value it as a morsel of genuine history, a thing so rare as to be always valuable.

A new broom sweeps clean but the old broom knows the corners.

Dust is particles of the past. If you clean, you're wiping away all those good memories.

It must always remain the great curiosity of history—a whim, a fantasy, an apparition, a thing unexpected and undreamed; and it should serve as a warning to those rash political theorists of to-day who speak with certitude of social processes. Capitalism