History Quotes

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

Today you play for a place in history, today you play for immortality.

Gerard Houllier, UEFA Cup Final 2001 pre - Match team talk

The course of human history is determined, not by what happens in the skies, but what takes place in our hearts.

Sir Arthur Keith

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

I cannot join the space program and restart my life as an astronaut, but this opportunity to connect my abilities as an educator with my interests in history and space is a unique opportunity to fulfill my early fantasies.

Christa McAuliffe

History is the unfolding of miscalculation.

Barbara Tuchman

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 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

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

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 is a vast early warning system.

Norman Cousins

I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.

John Adams

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

History has demonstrated that the most notable winners usually encountered heartbreaking obstacles before they triumphed. They won because they refused to become discouraged by their defeats.

Bertie Forbes

History, although sometimes made up of the few acts of the great, is more often shaped by the many acts of the small.

Mark Yost

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

Voltaire

Women with pasts interest men... they hope history will repeat itself.

Mae West

However gradual the course of history, there must always be the day, even an hour and minute, when some significant action is performed for the first or last time.

Peter Quennell

There was never in the history of the world a great politician who was not hated by large numbers of inferior men.

Unknown

Human consciousness arose but a minute before midnight on the geological clock. Yet we mayflies try to bend an ancient world to our purposes, ignorant perhaps of the messages buried in its long history. Let us hope that we are still in the early morning of our April day.

Stephen Jay Gould

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 discovering of the constant and universal principles of human nature.

David Hume

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

Gustave Flaubert

Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history.

George Bernard Shaw

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

Poetry comes nearer to vital truth than history.

Plato

History is more or less bunk.

Henry Ford

Religion is the monumental chapter in the history of human egotism.

William James

History teaches us that when a barbarian race confronts a sleeping culture, the barbarian always wins.

Arnold J. Toynbee

Difficulty is the excuse history never accepts.

Edward R. Murrow

History is fables agreed upon.

Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire

Numerous politicians have seized absolute power and muzzled the press. Never in history has the press seized absolute power and muzzled the politicians.

David Brinkley

If Beethoven had been killed in a plane crash at the age of 22, it would have changed the history of music... and of aviation.

Tom Stoppard

For most of history, Anonymous was a woman.

Virginia Woolf

History is little else than a picture of human crimes and misfortunes.

Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire

A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention in human history - with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila.

Mitch Ratliffe

History is philosophy teaching by examples.

Henry St. John Bolingbroke

Geschichte ist... ein Dialog zwischen Gegenwart und Vergangenheit. re - Transl.: History is... a dialogue between the present and the past.

Edward Hallet Carr, Was ist Geschichte?, S. 54