History Quotes
History is more or less bunk.Henry Ford
History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon.Napoleon Bonaparte
Life is a wonderful thing to talk about, or to read about in history books - But it is terrible when one has to live it.Jean Anouilh
Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishfull thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedoms.Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers chapter 4
History is always best written generations after the event, when clouded fact and memory have all fused into what can be accepted as truth, whether it be so or not.Theodore Harold White
History is a set of lies agreed upon.Napoleon Bonaparte
We have the power to make this the best generation of mankind in the history of the world - Or to make it the last.John Fitzgerald Kennedy
Some people make headlines while others make history.Philip Elmer - DeWitt, in Time Magazine
How could you be a Great Man if history brought you no Great Events, or brought you to them at the wrong time, too young, too old?Lois McMaster Bujold, "Memory", 1996
For a while I thought history was something bitter old men wrote. But Jack loved history so... for Jack history was full of heroes.Jacqueline Lee Bouvier Kennedy Onassis
The whole history of civilization is strewn with creeds and institutions which were invaluable at first, and deadly afterwards.Walter Bagehot
If we have learned one thing from the history of invention and discovery, it is that, in the long run - And often in the short one - The most daring prophecies seem laughably conservative.Arthur C. Clarke, The Exploration of Space, 1951
Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history.George Bernard Shaw
For the first time in the history of our country the majority of our people believe that the next five years will be worse than the past five years.James Earl Jimmy Carter, Jr.
That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach.Aldous Huxley
One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say.Will Durant
Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good.Thomas Sowell, Is Reality Optional?, 1993
If the past cannot teach the present and the father cannot teach the son, then history need not have bothered to go on, and the world has wasted a great deal of time.Russell Hoban
History is one war after another with a bunch of murders and natural disasters in between.Sarah Vowell, Assassination Vacation (p. 208)
There are periods in history when change is necessary, and other periods when it is better to keep everything for the time as it is. The art of life is to be in the rhythm of your age.Oswald Mosley
A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention in human history, with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila.Mitch Ratcliffe
Religion is the monumental chapter in the history of human egotism.William James
History is a vast early warning system.Norman Cousins
History has proven, God has never given anyone a dream Without also including the power to achieve that dream It is up to us to claim the power and go after that dream, Or just claim, it was only a dream.Unknown
What experience and history teach is this - That nations and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted upon any lessons they might have drawn from it.Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Karate is a form of martial arts in which people who have had years and years of training can, using only their hands and feet, make some of the worst movies in the history of the world.Dave Barry
Men make history, and not the other way around. In periods where there is no leadership, society stands still. Progress occurs when courageous, skillful leaders seize the opportunity to change things for the better.Harry S Truman
A single event can shape our lives or change the course of history.Deepak Chopra, The Return of Merlin
It is the minority that has stood in the vain of every moral conflict, and achieved all that is noble in the history of the world.John B. Gough
Poetry comes nearer to vital truth than history.Plato
History repeats itself historians repeat each other.Philip Guedalla
Crimes of which a people is ashamed constitute its real history. The same is true of man.Jean Genet
History is the witness that testifies to the passing of time it illumines reality, vitalizes memory, provides guidance in daily life and brings us tidings of antiquity.Cicero
Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of it. The history of liberty is a history of resistance. The history of liberty is a history of limitations of governmental power, not the increase of it.Nadia Boulange
The history of science is everywhere speculative. It is a marvelous hiatory. It makes you proud to be a human being.Karl R. Poppe
A strange thing is memory, and hope one looks backward, and the other forward one is of today, the other of tomorrow. Memory is history recorded in our brain, memory is a painter, it paints pictures of the past and of the day.Anna Mary Robertson Moses
I believe that individuals can make a difference in society. Since periods of change such as the present one come so rarely in human history, it is up to each of us to make the best use of our time to help create a happier world.The Dalai Lama, 1992 Speech
History does not record anywhere at any time a religion that has any rational basis. Religion is a crutch for people not strong enough to stand up to the unknown without help. But, like dandruff, most people do have a religion and spend time and money on it and seem to derive considerable pleasure from fiddling with it.Robert Heinlein, Time Enough for Love (1972)
