History Quotes
History is littered with the wars which everybody knew would never happen.Enoch Powell
History suggests that Capitalism is a necessary condition for political freedom.Milton Friedman
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
If one looks with a cold eye at the mess man has made of history, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that he has been afflicted by some built - In mental disorder which drives him towards self - Destruction.Arthur Koestle
History knows no resting places and no plateaus.Henry Kissinge
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
What is desperately needed... is the skepticism and the sense of history that a liberal arts education provides.Felix G. Rohatyn
Our ignorance of history makes us libel to our own times. People have always been like this.Gustave Flaubert
Inflation is bringing us true democracy. For the first time in history, luxuries and necessities are selling at the same price.Robert Orben
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
It is not observed in history that families improve with time.George William Curtis
From the beginning of our history the country has been afflicted with compromise. It is by compromise that human rights have been abandoned. I insist that this shall cease. The country needs repose after all its trials it deserves repose. And repose can only be found in everlasting principles.Charles Sumne
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
You think your pains and heartbreaks are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who have ever been alive.James Baldwin
No great man lives in vain. The history of the world is but the biography of great men.Thomas Carlyle
For four - Fifths of our history, our planet was populated by pond scum.J. W. Schopf
In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility - I welcome it.John Fitzgerald Kennedy
All humanity is passion; without passion, religion, history, novels, art would be ineffectual.Honore De Balzac
A page of history is worth a pound of logic.Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
History is the ship carrying living memories to the future.Stephen Spende
Judging from the main portion of the history of the world, so far, justice is always in jeopardy.Walt Whitman
History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives.Abba Eban
History is little else than a picture of human crimes and misfortunes.Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire
More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.Woody Allen
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
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
During the Second World War, the Germans took four years to build the Atlantic Wall. On four beaches it held up the Allies for about an hour at Omaha it held up the U. S. for less than one day. The Atlantic Wall must therefore be regarded as one of the greatest blunders in military history.Stephen Ambrose
Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the bible is filled, it would seem more consistent that we called it the word of a demon than the Word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind.Thomas Paine, "The Age of Reason".
If, after all, men cannot always make history have meaning, they can always act so that their own lives have one.Albert Camus
History does not repeat itself except in the minds of those who do not know history.Kahlil Gibran
Assassination has never changed the history of the world.Benjamin Disraeli
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
Difficulty is the excuse history never accepts.Edward R. Murrow
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
The memories of men are too frail a thread to hang history from.John Still
From the totalitarian point of view, history is something to be created rather than learned.George Orwell, Essay: "The Prevention of Literature" (1946)
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
