Quotes About History

The practice of our democracy depends on a sense of, and knowledge of, history in the same way that playing in the World Series requires a bat and a ball.

Every law, every constitution, every regulative decision is based upon what people are discussing in their community. It's based upon our sum knowledge of history and the present.

The only use of knowledge of the past is to equip us for the present.

The power of the past does not depend on our knowledge of it.

It is by no means certain that we advance our philosophical quest by reading Plato or Aristotle. It may increase our knowledge of history but not of the world.

Behind each biography there should always be a rich treasury of unformulated knowledge, a tapestry that has not been unrolled.

Mathematics is one of the most basic -- and most ancient -- types of knowledge. Yet the details of its historical development remain obscure to all but a few specialists.

Exclusively oral cultures are unencumbered by dead knowledge, dead facts. Libraries, on the other hand, are full of them.

I have no accurate knowledge of my age, never having seen any authentic record containing it.

History is our guide, and without a knowledge of history, we are lost!

Knowledge of the past and of the places of the earth is the ornament and food of the mind of man.

Sometimes a person has to go back really back-to have a sense an understanding of all that's gone to make them-before they can go forward.

History is for human self-knowledge…the only clue to what man can do is what man has done. The value of history, then, is that it teaches us what man has done and thus what man is.

Accessibility to information never been so advanced and easy in entire human history as it is now and we have no excuse for ignorance.

There is no shame in not knowing your history, the shame lies in not finding out.

In Pierre Trudeau, Canada has finally produced a Prime Minister worthy of assassination.

I'll be long gone before some smart person ever figures out what happened inside this Oval Office.

There has been a comparatively greater proportion of good queens, than of good kings.

History will never accept difficulties as an excuse.

The symbol of the lion, throughout history, throughout cultures, is one pure, radiant symbol and that is leadership, kingship

Leadership of a world-economy is an experience of power which may blind the victor to the march of history.

The great task of statesmanship is to apply past lessons to new situations, to draw correct analogies to understand and act upon present forces, to recognise the need for change.

I am not saying that during the Second World War Germany did not, under the leadership of the National Socialist government, commit crimes.

I don't think that a leader can control, to any great extent, his destiny. Very seldom can he step in and change the situation if the forces of history are running in another direction.