History Quotes

History buffs probably noted the reunion at a Washington party a few weeks ago of three ex - Presidents Carter, Ford and Nixon - See No Evil, Hear No Evil and Evil.

Robert Joseph Bob Dole

History repeats itself and history never repeats itself are about equally trueWe never know enough about the infinitely complex circumstances of any past event to prophesy the future by analogy.

George Macaulay Trevelyan

Well behaved women seldom make history.

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

History is philosophy teaching by example, and also warning its two eyes are geography and chronology.

James A. Garfield

The history of science is everywhere speculative. It is a marvelous hiatory. It makes you proud to be a human being.

Karl R. Poppe

What is desperately needed... is the skepticism and the sense of history that a liberal arts education provides.

Felix G. Rohatyn

History is philosophy teaching by examples.

Henry St. John Bolingbroke

Perhaps nothing has changed in the course of history as much as historians.

Franklin P. Jones

The peaceful transfer of authority is rare in history, yet common in our country. With a simple oath, we affirm old traditions and make new beginnings.

George W. Bush, Inaugural address, 2001

If we fight a war and win it with H - Bombs, what history will remember is not the ideals we were fighting for but the methods we used to accomplish them. These methods will be compared to the warfare of Genghis Khan who ruthlessly killed every last inhabitant of Persia.

Hans A. Bethe

Our ignorance of history makes us libel to our own times. People have always been like this.

Gustave Flaubert

I bet one legend that keeps recurring throughout history, in every culture, is the story of Popeye.

Jack Handey Deep Thoughts

For aught that I could ever read, Could ever hear by tale or history, The course of true love never did run smooth.

William Shakespeare

More than any time in history mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness, the other to total extinction. Let us pray that we have the wisdom to choose correctly.

Woody Allen

Indeed, history is nothing more than a tableau of crimes and misfortunes.

Voltaire

I often say of George Washington that he was one of the few in the whole history of the world who was not carried away by power.

Robert Frost

Not only the studying and writing of history but also the honoring of it both represent affirmations of a certain defiant faith - A desperate, unreasoning faith, if you will - But faith nevertheless in the endurance of this threatened world - Faith in the total essentiality of historical continuity.

George Frost Kennan

History is a better guide than good intentions.

Jeane J. Kirkpatrick

History never looks like history when you are living through it.

John W. Gardner, quoted by Bill Moyers

For my part, I consider that it will be found much better by all parties to leave the past to history, especially as I propose to write that history myself.

Sir Winston Churchill

History is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind.

Edward Gibbon

The history of saints is mainly the history of insane people.

Benito Mussolini

Morpheus Throughout human history, we have been dependent on machines to survive. Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony.

Matrix, The

For the very first time the young are seeing history being made before it is censored by their elders.

Margaret Mead

Natural selection, as it has operated in human history, favors not only the clever but the murderous.

Barbara Ehrenreich

A country losing touch with its own history is like an old man losing his glasses, a distressing sight, at once vulnerable, unsure, and easily disoriented.

George Walden

Some people make headlines while others make history.

Philip Elmer - DeWitt, in Time Magazine

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

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

A generation which ignores history has no past and no future.

Robert Heinlein, The Notebooks of Lazurus Long

The charm of history and its enigmatic lesson consist in the fact that, from age to age, nothing changes and yet everything is completely different.

Aldous Huxley

History does not repeat itself except in the minds of those who do not know history.

Kahlil Gibran

Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill.

Barbara Tuchman

History makes us some amends for the shortness of life.

Philip Skelton

Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime therefore, we must be saved by hope. Nothing true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history therefore, we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone therefore, we are saved by love.

Reinhold Niebuh

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.

France is delighted at this new opportunity to show the world... that when one has the will one can succeed in joining peoples who have been brought close by history.

Franois Maurice Mitterrand

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, Pro Publio Sestio