Quotes About History

Ross said quietly: 'Yes, I could sleep with you.' She smiled at him. He said: 'And for the same reasons will not.' 'Thank you, Captain.' He said: 'You've always been my firm friend – from so long ago. Almost before we knew each other well at all.' 'I believe I fancied you from the beginning.' 'I believe it was something more important than that, even then.

The Trenwith Poldarks had never been sticklers for the agrémens

The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.

Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.

A love for tradition has never weakened a nation, indeed it has strengthened nations in their hour of peril.

If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favorable reference to the devil in the House of Commons.

One day President Roosevelt told me that he was asking publicly for suggestions about what the war should be called. I said at once 'The Unnecessary War'.

Now at this very moment I knew that the United States was in the war, up to the neck and in to the death. So we had won after all! ... How long the war would last or in what fashion it would end no man could tell, nor did I at this moment care ... We should not be wiped out. Our history would not come to an end ... Hitler's fate was sealed. Mussolini's fate was sealed. As for the Japanese, they would be ground to a powder. All the rest was merely the proper application of overwhelming force.

Want of foresight, unwillingness to act when action would be simple and effective, lack of clear thinking, confusion of counsel until the emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong - these are the features which constitute the endless repetition of history.

The whole history of the world is summed up in the fact that, when nations are strong, they are not always just, and when they wish to be just, they are no longer strong.

We have always found the Irish a bit odd. They refuse to be English.

Winston S. Churchill

Of this I am certain, that if we open a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find that we have lost the future.

Don't talk to me about naval tradition. It's nothing but rum, sodomy, and the lash.

When we look back on all the perils through which we have passed...why should we fear for our future?

History with its flickering lamp stumbles along the trail of the past, trying to reconstruct its scenes, to revive its echoes, and kindle with pale gleams the passion of former days.

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

When Marshal Foch heard of the signing of the Peace Treaty of Versailles he observed with singular accuracy: "This is not Peace. It is an Armistice for twenty years.

The wars of people will be more terrible than those of kings.

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

Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say: 'This was their finest hour.

Time after time, history ran over the luddites and romanticists, those who sought to restore the old and delay the new. And every time, history did it with faster, more reliable and more advanced vehicles.

In Germany they had no kings. They developed them in Britain from leaders who claimed descent from the ancient gods.

The effective combination of the whole English-speaking world in the waging of war and the creation of the Grand Alliance form the conclusion to this part of my account. WINSTON S. CHURCHILL CHARTWELL January 1, 1950