Quotes About History

A classic is a book that survives the circumstances that made it possible yet alone keeps those circumstances alive.

If those who know why and how neglect to act, those who do not know will act, and the world will continue to flounder. The whole history of mankind and especially the present plight of the world show only too sadly how dangerous and expensive it is to have the world governed by those who do not know.

Archduke Ferdinand of Austria had been assassinated on June 28

Britain declared war on Germany.

Two hours later there was a longer wire from Winston Churchill

in the three-quarters of a century that men had been coming to South Georgia

She was to carry the Ross Sea party, under the command of Lieutenant Aeneas Mackintosh, who had served aboard the Nimrod on Shackleton's 1907–1909 expedition.

The trip across the Atlantic took more than two months.

The Stancomb Wills was safe in camp by one o'clock.

These words were written on the flyleaf of a Bible given to the expedition by Queen Mother

where the stores left in 1902 should still be.

Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay.

I the heir of all the ages, in the foremost files of time.

The last great Englishman is low.

I know that age to age succeeds,Blowing a noise of tongues and deeds,A dust of systems and of creeds.

The gardener Adam and his wifeSmile at the claims of long descent.

The history of socialistic ventures, shows that ordinary men are seldom capable of pure ideal altruism for any considerable time together, and that the exceptions are to be found only when masterful fervour of a small band of religious enthusiasts makes material concerns to count for nothing in comparison with the higher faith.

The religious vision, and its history of persistent expansion, is our one ground for optimism. Apart from it, human life is a flash of occasional enjoyments lighting up a mass of pain and misery, a bagatelle of transient experience.

No period of history has ever been great or ever can be that does not act on some sort of high, idealistic motives, and idealism in our time has been shoved aside, and we are paying the penalty for it.

Learning preserves the errors of the past, as well as its wisdom. For this reason, dictionaries are public dangers, although they are necessities.

The real history does not get written, because it is not in people's brains but in their nerves and vitals.

Everything of importance has been said before by somebody who did not discover it.

A science that hesitates to forget its founders is lost.

The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato