History Quotes

Political history is largely an account of mass violence and of the expenditure of vast resources to cope with mythical fears and hopes.

Murray Edelman, _Politics as Symbolic Action_, p. 1

Ideas shape the course of history.

John Maynard Keynes

It is not observed in history that families improve with time.

George William Curtis

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

William James

It is not I who have been consigned to the bedroom of history.

Corazn Cojuangco Aquino

Europe was created by history. America was created by philosophy.

Margaret Thatche

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.

Regrets are idle yet history is one long regret. Everything might have turned out so differently.

Charles Dudley Warne

We would like to live as we once lived, but history will not permit it.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy

History is full of surprises.

Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.

The very concept of history implies the scholar and the reader. Without a generation of civilized people to study history, to preserve its records, to absorb its lessons and relate them to its own problems, history, too, would lose its meaning.

George Frost Kennan

History is bunk.

Henry Ford

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

Gustave Flaubert

History is the discovering of the constant and universal principles of human nature.

David Hume

History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it.

Churchill

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

History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.

James Joyce

Well behaved women seldom make history.

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

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

When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority are wrong. The minority are right.

Eugene V. Debs

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

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

Gustave Flaubert

Live out of your imagination, not your history.

Stephen Covey

History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, however, if faced with courage, need not be lived again.

Maya Angelou

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

No event in American history is more misunderstood than the Vietnam War. It was misreported then, and it is misremembered now.

Richard Milhous Nixon

The library is the temple of learning, and learning has liberated more people than all the wars in history.

Carl Rowen

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

I respect every soldier, from every country, who serves beside us in the hard work of history. America is grateful, and America will not forget.

George W. Bush, September 2, 2004, The Republican National Convention, N. Y.

People who make history know nothing about history. You can see that in the sort of history they make.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton

The history of every country begins in the heart of a man or woman.

Willa Sibert Cathe

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

The great tragedies of history occur not when right confronts wrong but when two rights confront each other.

Henry Kissinge

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

Benito Mussolini

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

John W. Gardner, quoted by Bill Moyers

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

Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.

H. G. Wells