Quotes About History

America creates myths by focusing a lot of energy on its history and using it - - not always, but sometimes - for constructive purposes.

Anger does not make history. Power does. And power may be supplemented by anger, but it derives from more fundamental realities; geography, demographics, technology, and culture.

This awful catastrophe is not the end but the beginning. History does not end so. It is the way its chapters open.

In past history popularly elected governments have been no better and sometimes far worse than overt tyrannies.

History is never surprising after it happens.

When the history of our times is written, will we be remembered as the generation that turned our backs in a moment of global crisis or will it be recorded that we did the right thing?

Things that change history tend to be organized.

History is the record of human progress, a record of the struggle of the advancement of the human mind, of the human spirit, towards some known or unknown objective.

The greatest historian should also be a great moralist. It is no proof of impartiality to treat wickedness and goodness on the same level.

History offers some consolation by reminding us that sin has flourished in every age.

Popularity is the pocket change of history. The true measure is courage. There will never be another Charlton Heston.

History studies not just facts and institutions, its real subject is the human spirit.

History tells us what people do; historical fiction helps us imagine how they felt.

The history of the universe is, in effect, a huge and ongoing quantum computation. The universe is a quantum computer.

Historical novels, in particular, allow us to relive the past without the neatness of history, and with all the complexity of the present.

The irony about Charles II is not that he came to the throne because England needed a successor to Charles I, but because England needed a successor to Oliver Cromwell.

Our history is not our destiny.

We are at a pivotal moment in our shared history. The global goals of a healthy planet, social equality, and economic opportunity for all are within reach. But we cannot prevaricate.

I believe that we're all created in the image of God and we're all fallen sinners. And I think we can recognize that as we look backward in history.

The mixture of the oral and the written traditions in the writings of Plato enabled him to dominate the history of the West.

Even the most painstaking history is a bridge across an eternal mystery.

Active people don't change the world profoundly; ideas do. Napoleon is less important in world history than Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

Recorded history is wrong. It's wrong because the voiceless have no voice in it.

The task of the historian is to understand the peoples of the past better than they understand themselves.