Quotes About History

Many of the ugly pages of American history have been obscured and forgotten

There's not much place for the loyalists - especially the loyalists who left - in standard American history.

It is one of history's greatest ironies that, over the centuries, the pursuit of pleasure has resulted in more pain than enjoyment.

I don't blame younger generations for their lack of awareness. Americans in general are not interested in history.

History, as I recall, was never this winsome, and especially not this clean, but the real thing would never sell: most people prefer a past in which nothing smells.

I would also argue... that we are, by inclination and in terms of our history, we are small 'l' liberals, we Canadians.

The United States may have retained more of the intellectual imprint of the British 18th century than Britain itself.

The United States of America will sound as pompously in the world or in history as The Kingdom of Great Britain.

The history of mankind is a perennial tragedy; for the highest ideals which the individual may project are ideals which he can never realize in social and collective terms.

If history offers no obvious solutions, however, it does at least provide the comfort of knowing that failure is nothing new.

Seeking the ideal has a long history, it produces many saints but few paradigm changes.

Every good historian is almost by definition a revisionist. He looks at the accepted view of a particular historic episode or period with a very critical eye.

At its best, [Japanese cooking] is inextricably meshed with aesthetics, with religion, with tradition and history. It is evocative of seasonal changes, or of one's childhood, or of a storm at sea.

The equality of play was a surprise-it was the most competitive race in the seven-year history of MLS.

From the paths of blood (and such is the history of nations) I cannot refuse to turn aside to gather some flowers of science or virtue.

All you have learned from history is old ways of making mistakes. There is nothing that history can tell you about what we must do tomorrow. Only what we must not do.

Never stop reading. History doesn't repeat, but it does rhyme.

We care too much about what happens to be there as a result of history. I worry even more that we care too much for the past and not enough for the present and the near present.

To be nameless in worthy deeds exceeds an infamous history.

Only a fraction of the history of literacy has been typographic.

Journalism is the first draft of history

I learned more about history and literature in the used bookstores in DC than in college libraries.

Between history and the novel stands biography, their unwanted offspring, which has brought a great embarrassment to them both.

And me, myself personally, in order for there to be any kind of longevity there's gotta be some history.