Quotes About History

The historical sense involves a perception not only of the pastness of the past but of its presence.

History is a pact between the dead the living and the yet unborn.

History is just the portrayal of crimes and misfortunes.

The prolonged slavery of women is the darkest page in human history.

All our ancient history, as one of our wits remarked, is no more than accepted fiction.

History is the preceptor of prudence, not principles.

Any fool can make history, but it takes a genius to write it.

History is the devil's scripture.

History isn't just the story of bad people doing bad things. It's quite as much a story of people trying to do good things. But somehow, something goes wrong.

Because the human history is the history of shoes. The history of places where we ever tread and stand.

It has been said that though God cannot alter the past historians can - it is perhaps because they can be useful to Him in this respect that He tolerates their existence.

History – An account mostly false, of events unimportant, which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly fools.

Mistakes from our collective past are like any other: they require intervention--a remedy--to correct. They don't erase themselves over time.

To articulate what is past does not mean to recognize "how it really was." It means to take control of a memory, as it flashes in a moment of danger.

Academics have given up trying to recover an honest picture of the past and have decided that their history-writing should be simply an instrument of moral hand-wringing.

History is philosophy learned from examples.

If greatness was easy to attain, everyone's name would be in history books.

If you go back in American history, oysters were the food of poor people. New York was filled with oyster saloons in the 1800s.

Regard for the past only extends to its outward forms.

History is not another name for the past as many people imply. It is the name for stories about the past.

Give the historians something to write about.

War makes rattling good history but Peace is poor reading.

History has demonstrated that efforts to censure and control communication will not succeed.

The history of almost every civilization furnishes examples of geographical expansion coinciding with deterioration in quality.