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A million thanks to Steve for
sharing some of his fantastic collection with me!
History is a cyclic poem written by Time upon the memories of man.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
If you want to understand today, you have to search yesterday.
Pearl Buck
History is philosophy teaching by examples. Thucydides, The
History of the Peloponnesian War
People are trapped in history, and history is trapped in them.
James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son
The great eventful Present hides the Past; but through the din
Of its loud life hints and echoes from the life behind steal in.
John Greenleaf Whittier
Until lions have their historians, tales of the hunt shall always
glorify the hunters. African Proverb
The memories of men are too frail a thread to hang history from.
John Still, The Jungle Tide
All the ancient histories, as one of our wits say, are just fables
that have been agreed upon. Voltaire, Jeannot et Colin
Professor Johnston often said that if you didn't know history, you
didn't know anything. You were a leaf that didn't know it was part
of a tree. Michael Crichton, Timeline
We used to root for the Indians against the cavalry, because we
didn't think it was fair in the history books that when the cavalry
won it was a great victory, and when the Indians won it was a
massacre. Dick Gregory
History is herstory, too. Author Unknown
A history in which every particular incident may be true may on the
whole be false. Thomas Babington Macaulay
History with its flickering lamp stumbles along the trail of the
past, trying to reconstruct its scenes, to revive its echoes, and
kindle with pale gleams the passion of former days. Winston
Churchill
History is a mighty dramos, enacted upon the theatre of times, with
suns for lamps and eternity for a background. Thomas Carlyle
History is a novel for which the people is the author. Alfred de
Vigny, Rιflexions sur la Vιritι dans l'Art
History is a kind of introduction to more interesting people than we
can possibly meet in our restricted lives; let us not neglect the
opportunity. Dexter Perkins
History was a trash bag of random coincidences torn open in a wind.
Surely, Watt with his steam engine, Faraday with his electric motor,
and Edison with his incandescent light bulb did not have it as their
goal to contribute to a fuel shortage some day that would place
their countries at the mercy of Arab oil. Joseph Heller, Good as
Gold
Very few things happen at the right time, and the rest do not happen
at all: the conscientious historian will correct these defects.
Herodotus, The History of Herodotus
History: gossip well told. Elbert Hubbard, The Roycroft Dictionary
History is a symphony of echoes heard and unheard. It is a poem with
events as verses. Charles Angoff
If one could make alive again for other people some cobwebbed skein
of old dead intrigues and breathe breath and character into dead
names and stiff portraits. That is history to me! George Macaulay
Trevelyan
The history of the world is the record of a man in quest of his
daily bread and butter. Hendrik Wilhelm van Loon, The Story of
Mankind
Historians are gossips who tease the dead. Voltaire, Scribbling
Books
History is filled with the sound of silken slippers going downstairs
and wooden shoes coming up. Voltaire
We are the prisoners of history. Or are we? Robert Penn Warren,
Segregation
History never looks like history when you are living through it.
John W. Gardner
Legend: A lie that has attained the dignity of age. H.L. Mencken
God cannot alter the past, though historians can. Samuel Butler,
"Prose Observations"
History is the sum total of the things that could have been avoided.
Konrad Adenauer
Oh, God. The Sixties are coming back. Well I've got a 12-gauge
double-barreled duck gun chambered for three-inch Magnum shells. And
- speaking strictly for this retired hippie and former pinko beatnik
- if the Sixties head my way, they won't get past the porch steps.
They will be history. Which, for chrissakes, is what they're
supposed to be. P.J. O'Rourke
The very ink with which all history is written is merely fluid
prejudice. Mark Twain, Following the Equator
Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history. Plato, Ion
History is a vast early warning system. Norman Cousins
Historian: an unsuccessful novelist. H.L. Mencken
Historian: A broad-gauge gossip. Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's
Dictionary
History is a great dust heap. Thomas Carlyle, Obiter Dicta
Most history is guessing, and the rest is prejudice. Will and
Ariel Durant, Our Oriental Heritage
A lot of history is just dirty politics cleaned up for the
consumption of children and other innocents. Richard Reeves
History is past politics, and politics present history. John
Robert Seeley, The Growth of British Policy
Bound as our lives are to the tyranny of time, it is through what we
know of history that we are delivered from our bonds and escape -
into time. A.L. Rowse, The Use of History
The lovers of romance can go elsewhere for satisfaction but where
can the lovers of truth turn if not to history? Katharine Anthony
Man is a history-making creature who can neither repeat his past nor
leave it behind. W.H. Auden, The Dyer's Hand
Neither a wise man nor a brave man lies down on the tracks of
history to wait for the train of the future to run over him.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Each time history repeats itself, the price goes up. Author
Unknown
History is full of the dead weight of things which have escaped the
control of the mind, yet drive man on with a blind force.
Frederick Maurice Powicke, History, Freedom & Religion
Political history is far too criminal and pathological to be a fit
subject of study for the young. Children should acquire their heroes
and villains from fiction. W.H. Auden, A Certain World
More history's made by secret handshakes than by battles, bills, and
proclamations. John Barth, The Sot-Weed Factor
If an historian were to relate truthfully all the crimes, weaknesses
and disorders of mankind, his readers would take his work for satire
rather than for history. Pierre Bayle, Historical and Critical
Dictionary
Too many historical writers are the votaries of cults, which, by
definition are dedicated to whitewashing warts and hanging halos.
Thomas A. Bailey
Histories are a kind of distilled newspapers. Thomas Carlyle,
Heroes and Hero Worship
People think too historically. They are always living half in a
cemetery. Aristide Briand
Happy the people whose annals are blank in history-books. Thomas
Carlyle, Life of Frederick the Great
Sin writes histories, goodness is silent. Johann Wolfgang von
Goethe, Table - Talk
[History is] the story of the magnificent rear-guard action fought
during several thousand years by dogma against curiosity. Robert
S. Lynd
History begins in novel and ends in essay. Thomas Babington
Macaulay
[W]hen a historian enters into metaphysics he has gone to a far
country from whose bourne he will never return a historian.
Shailer Mathews, The Spiritual Interpretation of History
It is part of my creed that the only poetry is history, could we
tell it right. Thomas Carlyle
[T]he Present is the living sum-total of the whole Past. Thomas
Carlyle, Characteristics
History: An account mostly false, of events mostly unimportant,
which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly
fools. Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
Every age has a keyhole to which its eye is pasted. Mary McCarthy,
On the Contrary
As soon as histories are properly told there is no more need of
romances. Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
History is merely gossip. Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan
Some write a narrative of wars and feats,
Of heroes little known, and call the rant
A history.
William Cowper, The Task, The Garden
The writing of histories - as Goethe once noted - is one way of
getting rid of the weight of the past.... The writing of history
liberates us from history. Benedetto Croce, History as the Story
of Liberty
The challenge of history is to recover the past and introduce it to
the present. David Thelen
If you go back through 2000 years, I guess luck, Marx, and God have
made history, the three of them together. Theodore White
Princes should have more to fear from historians than have ugly
women from great painters. Antonio Pιrez, Aforismos
Historical investigation has for its aim to fix the order and
character of events throughout past time and in all places. The task
is frankly superhuman. George Santayana, The Life of Reason
Man watches his history on the screen with apathy and an occasional
passing flicker of horror or indignation. Conor Cruise O'Brien
The South creates the civilizations, the North conquers them, ruins
them, borrows from them, spreads them: this is one summary of
history. Will and Ariel Durant, Lessons of History
History is the transformation of tumultuous conquerors into silent
footnotes. Paul Eldridge, Maxims for a Modern Man
The Past lies upon the Present like a giant's dead body. Nathaniel
Hawthorne, The House of Seven Gables
Historians of literature like to regard a century as a series of ten
faces, each grimacing in a different way. Richard Ellman
History is never antiquated, because humanity is always
fundamentally the same. Walter Rauschenbusch
History maketh a young man to be old, without either wrinkles or
gray hairs; priviledging him with the experience of age, without
either the infirmities or inconveniences thereof. Thomas Fuller
I see History as a relay race in which one of us, before dropping in
his tracks, must carry one stage further the challenge of being a
man. Romain Gary
Perhaps history is a thing that would stop happening if God held His
breath, or could be imagined as turning away to think of something
else. Herbert Butterfield, Christianity and History
Crimes of which a people is ashamed constitute its real history. The
same is true of man. Jean Genet
When a history book contains no lies it is always tedious. Anatole
France, The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard
Men have need of history because, without it, the past threatens to
overwhelm them. Guy Fregault, La guerre de la conquκte
Isn't it amazing the way the future succeeds in creating an
appropriate past? John Leonard
History is never above the melee. It is not allowed to be neutral,
but forced to enlist in every army. Allan Nevins, The Gateway to
History
History, like a vast river, propels logs, vegetation, rafts, and
debris; it is full of live and dead things, some destined for
resurrection; it mingles many waters and holds in solution invisible
substances stolen from distant soils. Jacques Barzun, Clio and the
Doctors
History is the action and reaction of these two, nature and thought
- two boys pushing each other on the curbstone of the pavement.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Conduct of Life: Fate
All that the historians give us are little oases in the desert of
time, and we linger fondly in these, forgetting the vast tracks
between one and another that were trodden by the weary generations
of men. John Alfred Spender, The Comments of Bagshot
A boy who hears a lesson in history ended by the beauty of peace,
and how Napoleon brought ruin upon the world and that he should be
forever cursed, will not long have much confidence in his teacher.
He wants to hear more about the fighting and less about the peace
negotiations. William Lee Howard, Peace, Dolls and Pugnacity
[H]istory is a melodrama on the theme of parasitism, characterized
by scenes that are exciting or dull, as the case may be, and many a
sudden stagetrick. Max Nordau, The Interpretation of History
History is but the record of the public and official acts of human
beings. It is our object, therefore, to humanize our history and
deal with people past and present; people who ate and possibly
drank; people who were born, flourished and died; not grave
tragedians, posing perpetually for their photographs. Bill Nye,
History of the United States
History fades into fable; fact becomes clouded with doubt and
controversy; the inscription molders from the tablet: the statue
falls from the pedestal. Columns, arches, pyramids, what are they
but heaps of sand; and their epitaphs, but characters written in the
dust? Washington Irving, The Sketch Book: Westminster Abbey
For what is history, but... huge libel on human nature, to which we
industriously add page after page, volume after volume, as if we
were holding up a monument to the honor, rather than the infamy of
our species. Washington Irving, History of New York
Take from the altars of the past the fire - not the ashes. Jean
Jaures
The middle sort of historians (of which the most part are) spoil
all; they will chew our meat for us. Michel de Montaigne,
translated
Perhaps nobody has changed the course of history as much as the
historians. Franklin P. Jones
Woe unto the defeated,
whom history treads
into the dust.
Arthur Koestler, Darkness at Noon
The obscurest epoch is today. Robert Louis Stevenson, Across the
Plains
A mere compilation of facts presents only the skeleton of History;
we do but little for her if we cannot invest her with life, clothe
her in the habiliments of her day, and enable her to call forth the
sympathies of succeeding generations. Hannah Farnham Lee, The
Huguenots in France and America
It is a great pity that every human being does not, at an early
stage of his life, have to write a historical work. He would then
realize that the human race is in quite a jam about truth. Rebecca
West
For me there is no greater subject than history. How a man can study
it and not be forced to become a philosopher, I cannot tell.
George E. Wilson
Our history is every human history; a black and gory business, with
more scoundrels than wise men at the lead, and more louts than both
put together to cheer and follow. Philip Wylie, Generation of
Vipers
What would constitute useful history? That which should teach us our
duties and our rights, without appearing to teach them. Voltaire,
Philosophical Dictionary
It might be a good idea if the various countries of the world would
occasionally swap history books, just to see what other people are
doing with the same set of facts. Bill Vaughan
Whose game was empires and whose stakes were thrones,
Whose table earth, whose dice were human bones.
George Gordon, Lord Byron, "The Age of Bronze"
Histories used often to be stories: the fashion now is to leave out
the story. Our histories are stall-fed: the facts are absorbed by
the reflexions, as the meat is sometimes by the fat. Augustus
William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two
Brothers, 1827
A look at the past reminds us of how great is the distance, and how
short, over which we have come. The past makes us ask what we have
done with us. It makes us ask whether our very achievements are not
ironical counterpoint and contrast to our fundamental failures.
Robert Penn Warren
Knowledge of history frees us to be contemporary. Lynn White, Jr.
The past actually happened but history is only what someone wrote
down. A. Whitney Brown, The Big Picture
History is a pack of lies about events that never happened told by
people who weren't there. George Santayana
I don't know much about history, and I wouldn't give a nickel for
all the history in the world. History is more or less bunk. It is a
tradition. We want to live in the present, and the only history that
is worth a tinker's damn is the history we make today. Henry Ford
A lot of guys have had a lot of fun joking about Henry Ford because
he admitted one time that he didn't know history. He don't know it,
but history will know him. He has made more history than his critics
ever read. Will Rogers
The past is really almost as much a work of the imagination as the
future. Jessamyn West
History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals
and many copies. Alexis de Tocqeville, 1856
Whosoever, in writing a modern history, shall follow truth too near
the heels, it may haply strike out his teeth. Walter Raleigh,
History of the World
History in general is a collection of crimes, follies, and
misfortunes among which we have now and then met with a few virtues,
and some happy times. Voltaire, L'Ingιnu
History... is, indeed, little more than the register of the 'crimes,
follies, and misfortunes' of mankind. But what experience and
history teach is this - that peoples and governments have never
learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from
it. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Philosophy of History,
"Introduction," 1807
History balances the frustration of "how far we have to go" with the
satisfaction of "how far we have come." It teaches us tolerance for
the human shortcomings and imperfections which are not uniquely of
our generation, but of all time. Lewis F. Powell, Jr.
The dead hand has too long hampered the freedom of the living.
James Robertson
The historian has before him a jigsaw puzzle from which many pieces
have disappeared. These gaps can be filled only by his imagination.
Gaetano Salvemini, Historian and Scientist
History knows that it can wait for more evidence and review its
older verdicts; it offers an endless series of courts of appeal, and
is ever ready to reopen closed cases. William Stubbs
Skepticism is history's bedfellow. Edgar Saltus
The effects of human wickedness are written on the page of history
in characters of blood: but the impression soon fades away; so more
blood must be shed to renew it. Augustus William Hare and Julius
Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, 1827
History does not unfold: it piles up. Robert M. Adams, Bad Mouth
The day before yesterday always has been a glamour day. The present
is sordid and prosaic. Time colors history as it does a meerschaum
pipe. Vincent Starrett, Buried Caesars
History is a pageant and not a philosophy. Augustine Birrell,
Obiter Dicta: The Muse of History
History, like thermodynamics, won't let you out. Ira Haron
Radical historians now the tell the story of Thanksgiving from the
point of view of the turkey. Mason Cooley
History is nothing but a problem of mechanics applied to psychology.
Hippolyte Taine
History: the category of human phenomena which tends to catastrophe.
Jules Romains, Men of Good Will
The public history of all countries, and all ages, is but a sort of
mask, richly colored. The interior working of the machinery must be
foul. John Quincy Adams
History - that little sewer where man loves to wallow. Francis
Ponge
History: a collection of epitaphs. Elbert Hubbard, The Roycroft
Dictionary
Unfortunately, it is also true that the age's interests often color
the past with unhistoric hues. Wendell H. Stephenson
Every great writer is a writer of history, let him treat on almost
any subject he may. Walter Savage Landor, Imaginary Conversation:
Diogenes and Plato
[T]he historian must serve two masters, the past and the present.
Fritz Stern, The Varieties of History
[History is] a damn dim candle over a damn dark abyss. W. Stull
Holt
[W]hat mountains of dead ashes, wreck and burnt bones, does
assiduous pedantry dig up from the past time and name it History.
Thomas Carlyle
No one can really know the life of his own day, let alone that of
times long past. Always the historian sees as in a mirror darkly,
the reds and the golds rendered drab by the shadows of time. Earl
R. Beck, On Teaching History in Colleges and Universities
When we skim along the surface of history we see little but the
rough barren rocks that rise out of it. Augustus William Hare and
Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, 1827
Man is an historical animal, with a deep sense of his own past; and
if he cannot integrate the past by a history explicit and true, he
will integrate it by a history implicit and false. Geoffrey
Barraclough, History in a Changing World
The idea of history in any age, like the idea of property, or of
progress, is an unstable compound; it is put together as needed, by
historians or by philosophers, out of the irreconcilable opinions of
men. F. Smith Fussner, The Historical Revolution
Even the most painstaking history is a bridge across an eternal
mystery. Bruce Catton, Prefaces to History
Almost the whole of history is but a sequence of horrors.
Sιbastien Roch Nicolas Chamfort, Maxims and Considerations
One of the deepest impulses in man is the impulse to record, - to
scratch a drawing on a tusk or keep a diary, to collect sagas and
heap cairns. This instinct as to the enduring value of the past is,
one might say, the very basis of civilization. John Jay Chapman,
Memories and Milestones
History is not the past, but a map of the past drawn from a
particular point of view to be useful to the modern traveler.
Henry Glassie
A history in which every particular incident may be true may on the
whole be false. Thomas Babington Macaulay
History, that excitable and unreliable old lady. Guy de
Maupassant, Sur l'Eau
Wars usually have the effect of speeding up the process of history.
Pieter Geyl, Debates With Historians
[I]t was that there are no simple lessons in history, that it is
human nature that repeats itself, not history. John Toland
[History] is fallible as every man is fallible. But it is likewise
trustworthy, as a man is trustworthy who has looked into himself and
come to know how blended are dust and fire in the innermost recesses
of the human heart. Arthur Bestor
There is nothing more dangerous than history used as a defense, or
history used for preaching; history used as a tool is no longer
history. Marcel Trudel
We are never completely contemporaneous with our present. History
advances in disguise; it appears on stage wearing a mask of the
preceding scene, and we tend to lose the meaning of the play.
Rιgis Debray, Revolution in the Revolution?
History is the open Bible: we historians are not priests to expound
it infallibly: our function is to teach people to read it and to
reflect upon it for themselves. George Macaulay Trevelyan
Delusion about history is a serious matter; it can gravely affect
the history that is waiting to be made. John Terraine
History supplies little beyond a list of those who have accommodated
themselves with the property of others. Voltaire, Philosophical
Dictionary
The real history does not get written, because it is not in people's
brains but in their nerves and vitals. Alfred North Whitehead,
Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead
Clio may be the most austere and chaste of the Muses, but she has
been known to come down informally from Mount Helicon in a mood so
raffish that there are those who claim to have seen her with her
slip showing. Willis Thornton, Fable, Fact and History
And how fascinating history is - the long, variegated pageant of
man's still continuing evolution of this strange planet, so much the
most interesting of all the myriads of spinners through space.
George Macaulay Trevelyan, An Autobiography
No modern idea has affected history more than the passion of
nationalism. Charles R. Poinsatte, Understanding History Through
the American Experience
A nation that forgets its past can function no better than an
individual with amnesia. David McCullough
The good historian is like the giant of the fairy tale. He knows
that wherever he catches the scent of human flesh, there his quarry
lies. Marc Bloch, The Historian's Craft
The historian has been the hearth at which the soul of the country
has been kept alive. John Morley, Notes on Politics and History
It has become too easy to see that the luckless men of the past
lived by mistakes, even absurd beliefs, so we may well fail in a
decent respect for them, and forget that historians of the future
will point out that we too lived by myths. Herbert J. Muller,
Freedom in the Western World
You don't change the course of history by turning the faces of
portraits to the wall. Jawaharlal Nehru
The best portraits are perhaps those in which there is a slight
mixture of caricature; and we are not certain that the best
histories are not those in which a little of the exaggeration of
fictitious narrative is judiciously employed. Something is lost in
accuracy; but much is gained in effect. The fainter lines are
neglected; but the great characteristic features are imprinted on
the mind forever. Thomas Babington Macaulay, Machiavelli
History is the story of events, with praise or blame. Cotton
Mather
If history were a photograph of the past it would be flat and
uninspiring. Happily, it is a painting; and, like all works of art,
it fails of the highest truth unless imagination and ideas are mixed
with the paints. Allen Nevins
A recorded past is no more than a bygone present composed of the
footprints made by human beings actually going somewhere but not
knowing (in any extended sense), and certainly not revealing to us,
how, they came to be afoot on these particular journeys. Michael
Oakeshott, On History
Historians are themselves products of history. Paul K. Conkin and
Roland N. Stromberg, Heritage and Challenge
History is politics projected into the past. M.N. Pokrovsky
The tapestry of history that seems so full of tragedy when viewed
from the front has countless comic scenes woven into its reverse
side. In truth, tragedy and comedy are the twin masks of history -
its mass appeal. Josι Ortega y Gasset, Historical Reason
It is striking how history, when resting on the memory of men,
always touches the bounds of mythology. Leopold von Ranke, History
of the Popes
It is with nations as it is with individuals. A book of history is a
book of sermons. Arthur Conan Doyle, Micah Clarke
History portrays everything as if it could not have come otherwise.
History is on the side of what happened. Elias Canetti, The Human
Province
In a certain sense all men are historians. Thomas Carlyle, Essays:
On History
It is pleasant to be transferred from an office where one is afraid
of a sergeant-major into an office where one can intimidate
generals, and perhaps this is why history is so attractive to the
more timid among us. We can recover self-confidence by snubbing the
dead. E.M. Forster, Abinger Harvest
The lesson of history is rarely learned by the actors themselves.
James A. Garfield
The amazing thing since so many variables enter into historical
judgments, is not that historians disagree but that they agree as
often as they do. Louis Gottschalk, Understanding History
History is written by the winners. Alex Haley
[History is] that terrible mill in which sawdust rejoins sawdust.
Edith Sitwell
History is the daughter of time. Lucien Febvre, The Problem of
Unbelief in the Sixteenth Century
History paints the human heart. Napoleon I
Events in the past may roughly be divided into those which probably
never happened and those which do not matter. W.R. Inge,
Assessments and Anticipations
It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.
Henry James, Life of Nathaniel Hawthorne
History is an argument without end. Pieter Geyl
This is my history; like all other histories, a narrative of misery.
Samuel Johnson
History is a bath of blood. William James, Memories and Studies
History... is an aggregation of truths, half-truths, semi-truths,
fables, myths, rumors, prejudices, personal narratives, gossip, and
official prevarications. It is a canvas upon which thousands of
artists throughout the ages have splashed their conceptions and
interpretations of a day and an era. Some motifs are grotesque and
some are magnificent. Philip D. Jordan
We proceed out of history into history again. Sidney Alexander
The game of history is usually played by the best and the worst over
the heads of the majority in the middle. Eric Hoffer, The True
Believer
[H]istory gives answers only to those who know how to ask questions.
Hajo Holborn, History and the Humanities
There is no such thing as a neutral or purely objective historian.
Without an opinion a historian would be simply a ticking clock, and
unreadable besides. Philip Howard
History offers some consolation by reminding us that sin has
flourished in every age. Will and Ariel Durant, Lessons of History
[T]he historian and the detective have much in common. Mark M.
Krug, History and the Social Sciences
History is the synthesis of all social sciences turned towards the
past. Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie
Civilization is a stream with banks. The stream is sometimes filled
with blood from people killing, stealing, shouting and doing the
things historians usually record, while on the banks, unnoticed,
people build homes, make love, raise children, sing songs, write
poetry and even whittle statues. The story of civilization is the
story of what happened on the banks. Historians are pessimists
because they ignore the banks for the river. Will Durant
The present is the past rolled up for action, and the past is the
present unrolled for understanding. Will and Ariel Durant, The
Reformation
[T]he historian lays humanity on the couch. Lynn White, Jr.
History is the most dangerous product which the chemistry of the
mind has concocted. Its properties are well known. It produces
dreams and drunkenness. It fills people with false memories,
exaggerates their reactions, exacerbates old grievances, torments
them in their repose, and encourages either a delirium of grandeur
or a delusion of persecution. It makes whole nations bitter,
arrogant, insufferable and vainglorious. Paul Valιry, Regards sur
le Monde Actuel
The study of history is the playground of patriotism. George M.
Wrong
History, as long as it continues to happen, is always another
chance. R. Jackson Wilson
History being the record of human action is a richly variegated
material, and it is not easy to give a true impression of the stuff
by snipping off an inch or two for a pattern. Cicely Veronica
Wedgwood, Truth and Opinion
History is the propaganda of the victors. Ernst Toller
[Some historians hold that history] is just one damned thing after
another. Arnold Toynbee
Every true history must force us to remember that the past was once
as real as the present and as uncertain as the future. George
Macaulay Trevelyan, Clio, A Muse
People tend to forget that the word "history" contains the word
"story". Ken Burns
The past is malleable and flexible, changing as our recollection
interprets and re-explains what has happened. Peter Berger
History is a tool used by politicians to justify their intentions.
Ted Koppel
The notion that any one person can describe 'what really happened'
is an absurdity. If ten - or a hundred - people witness an event,
there will be ten - or a hundred - different versions of what took
place. David and Leigh Eddings
Every major horror of history was committed in the name of an
altruistic motive. Has any act of selfishness ever equaled the
carnage perpetrated by disciples of altruism? Ayn Rand, The
Fountainhead
[H]istorians have powerful imaginations, which are essential and
dangerous. Robert Stinson
As Geography without History seemeth a carkasse without motion; so
History without Geography wandreth as a Vagrant without a certaine
habitation. John Smith
The historian reports to us, not events themselves, but the
impressions they have made on him. Heinrich von Sybel
If the past has been an obstacle and a burden, knowledge of the past
is the safest and the surest emancipation. John Acton
History provides neither compensation for suffering nor penalties
for wrong. John Acton
History studies not just facts and institutions, its real subject is
the human spirit. Fustel de Coulange, La Citι antique, 1864
All other forms of history - economic history, social history,
psychological history, above all sociology - seem to me history with
the history left out. A.J.P. Taylor
Too many so-called historians are really 'hysterians'; their
thinking is more visceral than cerebral. When their duties as
citizens clash with their responsibilities as scholars, Clio
frequently takes a back seat. Thomas A. Bailey
History is principally the inaccurate narration of events which
ought not to have happened. Earnest Albert Hooten, The Twilight of
Man
[T]hat is the triumph of history - truth absolute is not at hand;
the original with which to match the copy does not exist. Jacques
Barzun, Clio and the Doctors
Without philosophy, history seems to me to be deaf and dumb.
Ferdinand Baur, Symbolik und Mythologic
The past remains integral to us all, individually and collectively.
We must concede the ancients their place, as I have argued. But
their place is not simply back there in a separate and foreign
country; it is assimilated in ourselves, and resurrected into an
ever-changing present. David Lowenthal, The Past Is a Foreign
Country
For the rubble of history, which is undigested and therefore goes on
blindly, does not lie so thickly on the ground as in our own
consciousness. Herbert Lόthy
Unlike poetry and music, the art of history is cumulative. John
Clive, Not By Fact Alone
In studying history we are finding out about ourselves, and in the
last resort the natural sciences and even mathematics have the same
final end. Vivian Hunter Galbraith, An Introduction to the Study
of History
History is the record of what one age finds worthy of note in
another. Jacob Burckhardt
The entire history of mankind is, in any case, nothing but a
prolonged fight to the death for the conquest of universal prestige
and absolute power. Albert Camus, The Rebel
History is concerned primarily with human phenomena, not with
natural; and history is doubly human because, as an idea, it is
man's creation, challenging him to transcend the limits of
information about himself and to discover what he is by finding
meaning in what he has done. In short, it is man's commentary on
man. John Barker, The Superhistorians
For me, in fact, the mark of the historic is the nonchalance with
which it picks up an individual and deposits him in a trend, like a
house playfully moved by a tornado. Mary McCarthy, On the Contrary
The unrecorded past is none other than our old friend, the tree in
the primeval forest which fell without being heard. Barbara
Tuchman
Our historic imagination is at best slightly developed. We
generalise and idealise the past egregiously. We set up little toys
to stand as symbols for centuries and the complicated lives of
countless individuals. John Dewey, Characters and Events
[History is] a tyranny over the souls of the dead - and so the
imagination of the living. William Carlos Williams
The mists remain of the false glory that erupts from history.
Miguel de Unamuno, En Gredos
History is the discipline closest to life; and life is rarely free
of contradictions. Karl J. Weintraub, Visions of Culture
History is who we are and why we are the way we are. David
McCullough
History is the myth, the true myth, of man's fall made manifest in
time. Henry Miller, Plexus
The historian amputates reality. Gaetano Salvemini, Historian and
Scientist
History is a jangle of accidents, blunders, surprises and
absurdities, and so is our knowledge of it, but if we are to report
it at all we must impose some order upon it. Henry Steele
Commanger, The Nature and the Study of History
History is not a pattern-book of fossilized ideologies. Frederick
Maurice Powicke, Three Lectures
History... is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake. James
Joyce, Ulysses
History is but the nail on which the picture hangs. Alexandre
Dumas, Catherine Howard
The future is dark, the present burdensome. Only the past, dead and
buried, bears contemplation. G.R. Elton, The Practice of History
All history becomes subjective; in other words there is properly no
history, only biography. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays: History
History is the essence of innumerable biographies. Thomas Carlyle,
On History
History only exists, in the final analysis, for God. Albert Camus,
The Rebel
[History is] petrified imagination. Arthur Baer
It is the true office of history to represent the events themselves,
together with the counsels, and to leave the observations and
conclusions thereupon to the liberty and faculty of every man's
judgment. Francis Bacon, Advancement of Learning
[History is a] mixture of error and violence. Johann Wolfgang von
Goethe
No less than the tourist, the writer of history profits from maps.
Charles F. Mullett
Man simply cannot live as the time-animal and the art-animal that he
is, without history. Carlton J.H. Hayes
To many of the modern generations, history, like God, is dead.
Derek Heather
[H]istory is the sextant of states which, tossed by wind and
current, would be lost in confusion if they could not fix their
position. Allan Nevins, The Gateway to History
No other discipline has its portals so wide open to the general
public as history. Johan Huizinga, Men and Ideas
A mind devoid of prepossessions is likely to be devoid of all mental
furniture. And the historian who thinks that he can clean his mind
as he would a slate with a wet sponge, is ignorant of the simplest
facts of mental life. Allen Johnson, The Historian and Historical
Evidence
The theologian may indulge the pleasing task of describing Religion
as she descended from Heaven, arrayed in her native purity. A more
melancholy duty is imposed on the historian. He must discover the
inevitable mixture of error and corruption which she contracted in a
long residence upon earth, among a weak and degenerate race of
beings. Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
History attempts to provide society with an artificial collective
memory. Mark M. Krug, History and the Social Sciences
A morsel of genuine history is a thing so rare as to be always
valuable. Thomas Jefferson
History, in general, only informs us what bad government is.
Thomas Jefferson
History teaches us the mistakes we are going to make. Author
Unknown
History is a living whole. If one organ be removed, it is nothing
but a lifeless mass. Frederic Harrison, The Meaning of History
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Quotations about History