Quotes About History

We must never forget that the record on which we judge these defendants is the record on which history will judge us tomorrow. To pass these defendants a poisoned chalice is to put it to our own lips as well.

The past is prologue—and why are the lessons not being learned?

We must never forget that the record on which we judge these defendants today is the record on which history will judge us tomorrow.

We must remain aware that, despite the veneer of civilization and the outward manifestations of culture and refinement, insidious atavistic impulses remain in every country and no nation has a monopoly on atrocity.

I think feminists are unaware of the tremendous extent of the role of women in history.

I don't have space to enter into the examples or the history of this, so I'm left with having to make the bold statement that culture is extinct.

In history people dressed much better than we do today.

It is more pleasant and useful to go through the "experience of revolution" than to write about it.

There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.

Human knowledge is not (or does not follow) a straight line, but a curve, which endlessly approximates a series of circles, a spiral. Any fragment, segment, section of this curve can be transformed (transformed one-sidedly) into an independent, complete, straight line, which then (if one does not see the wood for the trees) leads into the quagmire, into clerical obscurantism (where it is anchored by the class interests of the ruling classes).

Logic is the science not of external forms of thought, but of the laws of development "of all material, natural and spiritual things", i.e., of the development of the entire concrete content of the world and of its cognition, i.e., the sum-total, the conclusion of the History of knowledge of the world.

The history of all countries shows that the working class exclusively by its own effort is able to develop only trade-union consciousness.

The revolution does not need historians.

I had already drawn up the plan for the next, the seventh chapter, on the 'Experience of the Russian Revolutions of 1905 and 1917.' But... It is more pleasant and useful to go through the 'experience of the revolution' than to write about it.

In the history of modern socialism this is a phenomenon, that the strife of the various trends within the socialist movement has from national become international.

Alas! In vain historians pry and probe: The same wind blows, and in the same live robe Truth bends her head to fingers curved cupwise; And with a woman's smile and a child's care Examines something she is holding there Concealed by her own shoulder from our eyes.

History proves that all dictatorships, all authoritarian forms of government are transient. Only democratic systems are not transient. Whatever the shortcomings, mankind has not devised anything superior.

The path towards a free society has not been simple. There are tragic and glorious pages in our history.

Whoever does not miss the Soviet Union has no heart. Whoever wants it back has no brain.

Haha come fight us now Napoleon

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On vit bien (...) que la France n'était pas réconciliée avec elle-même, ce qui n'étonne pas quand lorsqu'on pense que c'est le seul pays au monde à avoir une fête nationale et un hymne national qui célèbrent la division et non l'union.

The right-wing critique of capitalism--that is, the critique which is unsupported by the objective movement of history--however true, acute, profound, even brilliant it might be--can only end up by capitulating before the very evil it condemns.

No smiths forge myths.