History Quotes

For four - Fifths of our history, our planet was populated by pond scum.

J. W. Schopf

I am responsible only to God and history.

Francisco Franco

We are living the events which for centuries to come will be minutely studied by scholars who will undoubtedly describe these days as probably the most exciting and creative in the history of mankind. But preoccupied with our daily chores, our worries and personal hopes and ambitions, few of us are actually living in the present.

Lawrence K. Frank

Everything is theoretically impossible, until it is done. One could write a history of science in reverse by assembling the solemn pronouncements of highest authority about what could not be done and could never happen.

Robert Anson Heinlein

I believe that the supreme duty of the historian is to write history, that is to say, to attempt to record in one sweeping sequence the greater events and movements that have swayed the destiny of man.

Steven Runciman

The first glance at History convinces us that the actions of men proceed from their needs, their passions, their characters and talents and impresses us with the belief that such needs, passions and interests are the sole spring of actions.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

History teaches that wars begin when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap.

Ronald Reagan, Address to the Nation, Jan 16, 1984

America is the only nation in history which miraculously has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilization.

Georges Clemenceau

The people of the United States, perhaps more than any other nation in history, love to abase themselves and proclaim their unworthiness, and seem to find refreshment in doing so... That is a dark frivolity, but still frivolity.

Robertson Davies

From their experience or from the recorded experience of others history, men learn only what their passions and their metaphysical prejudices allow them to learn.

Aldous Huxley

Most history is a record of triumphs, disasters, and follies of top people. The black hole in it is the way of life of mute, inglorious men and women who made no nuisance of themselves in the world.

Philip Howard