History: An account, mostly false, of events, mostly
unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly
knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools - Ambrose Bierce
History knows no resting places and no plateaus - Henry
Kissinger
In historic events, the so-called great men are labels
giving names to events, and like labels they have but the
smallest connection with the event itself – Tolstoy
History is that form which his imagination seeks
comprehension of the living existence of the world in
relation to his own life, which he thereby invests with a
deeper reality - Oswald Spengler
The historian does simply not come in to replenish the
gaps of memory. He constantly challenges even those
memories that have survived intact - Yosef Yerushalmi
Since history has no properly scientific value, its only
purpose is educative. And if historians neglect to
educate the public...then all their historical learning is
valueless except in so far as it educates themselves - M.
Trevelyan
Who controls the past controls the future: who controls
the present controls the past - George Orwell
History is for human self-knowledge…Knowing yourself
means knowing what you can do; and since nobody
knows what they can do until they try, 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 - R. G. Collingwood
Human history becomes more and more a race
between education and catastrophe - H. G. Wells
History . . . is indeed little more than the
register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes
of mankind - Edward Gibbon
History shows us how many ways one subject can
be viewed. We learn not to be too contemptuous
of mistakes made by historical figures who were
trying to accomplish something - John
Eisenhower
A nation which does not know what it was
yesterday, does not know what it is today, nor
what it is trying to do - Woodrow Wilson
Every past is worth condemning – Nietzsche
To each eye the outlines of a great civilization
present a different picture. In the wide ocean upon
which we venture, the possible ways and directions
are many…and lead to essentially different
conclusions - Jacob Burckhardt
History is the best medicine for a sick mind; for in
history you have a record of the infinite variety of
human experience…examples and warnings; fine
things to take as models, rotten things to avoid –
Livy
Each age writes the history of the past with
reference to the conditions uppermost in its own
time - Frederick Turner
Those who cannot remember the past are
condemned to repeat it – Santayana
An historian should yield himself to his
subject, become immersed in the place and
period of his choice, standing apart from it
now and then for a fresh view - Samuel Eliot
Morison
History is a better guide than good intentions
- Jeane Kirkpatrick
History does not repeat itself except in the
minds of those who do not know history Kahlil Gibran
Only strong personalities can endure history, the weak
ones are extinguished by it – Nietzsche
The first lesson of history is the good of evil - Ralph
Waldo Emerson
Only a good-for-nothing is not interested in his past Sigmund Freud
If you do not like the past, change it - William L. Burton
Man will never be free until the last king is strangled
with the entrails of the last priest - Denis Diderot
History is the witness that testifies to the passing of
time; it illuminates reality, vitalizes memory, provides
guidance in daily life, and brings us tidings of antiquity –
Cicero
Fiction is history, human history, or it is nothing - Joseph
Conrad
Study history, study history. In history lies all the secrets
of statecraft - Winston Churchill
The causes of events are ever more interesting than the
events themselves – Cicero
He who cannot draw on three thousand years is living
from hand to mouth – Goethe
If a man could say nothing against a character but what
he can prove, history could not be written - Samuel
Johnson
To study history means submitting to chaos and
nevertheless retaining faith in order and meaning. It is a
very serious task, ... and possibly a tragic one - Hermann
Hesse
History is a string full of knots, the best you can do is
admire it, and maybe tie it up a bit more. History is a
hammock for swinging and a game for playing Jeannette Winterson
History is more or less bunk - Henry Ford
Peoples and governments have never learned anything
from history, or acted on principles deducible from it G.W.F. Hegel
History is Philosophy teaching by examples –
Thucydides
The function of the historian is neither to love the past
nor to emancipate himself from the past, but to master
and understand it as the key to the understanding of the
present - E. H. Carr