History Quotes

Neither a wise man nor a brave man lies down on the tracks of history to wait for the train of the future to run over him

Dwight D. Eisenhower

Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history

Abraham Lincoln

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 Albrecht Bethe

All history has been a history of class struggles between dominated classes at various stages of social development.

Friedrich Engels

In the tumult of men and events, solitude was my temptation; now it is my friend. What other satisfaction can be sought once you have confronted History?

Charles De Gaulle

Your grand-father taught me the politics of pride, your grandmother taught me the politics of poverty. I am beholden to both for the fine synthesis. To you, my darling daughter, I give only one message. It is the message of the morrow, the message of history. Believe only in the people, work only for their emancipation and equality. The paradise of God lies under the feet of your mother. The paradise of politics lies under the feet of the people.

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto

The history of Islam is the best testament to how different communities can live together in peace and harmony. Muslims must exemplify the true image of Islam in their interaction with other communities.

Al-Sudais, Abdul Rahman

History will absolve me.

Fidel Castro

The war against Vietnam is only the ghastliest manifestation of what I'd call imperial provincialism, which afflicts America's whole culture - aware only of its own history, insensible to everything which isn't part of the local atmosphere.

Richard M. Nixon

It is certain that during the sixteenth century, and the years that preceded and followed it, poisoning was brought to a perfection unknown to modern chemistry, as history itself will prove. Italy, the cradle of modern science, was, at this period, the inventor and mistress of these secrets, many of which are now lost.

Honor de Balzac

A lawyer without history or literature is a mechanic, a mere working mason; if he possesses some knowledge of these, he may venture to call himself an architect.

Sir Walter Scott

The use of this feigned history hath been to give some shadow of satisfaction to the mind of man in those points wherein the nature of things doth deny it, the world being in proportion inferior to the soul; by reason whereof there is, agreeable to the spirit of man, a more ample greatness, a more exact goodness, and a more absolute variety, than can be found in the nature of things. Therefore, because the acts or events of true history have not that magnitude which satisfieth the mind of man, poesy feigneth acts and events greater and more heroical: because true history propoundeth the successes and issues of actions not so agreeable to the merits of virtue and vice, therefore poesy feigns them more just in retribution, and more according to revealed providence: because true history representeth actions and events more ordinary, and less interchanged, therefore poesy endueth them with more rareness, and more unexpected and alternative variations: so as it appeareth that poesy serveth and conferreth to magnanimity, morality, and to delectation. And therefore it was ever thought to have some participation of divineness, because it doth raise and erect the mind, by submitting the shows of things to the desires of the mind; whereas reason doth buckle and bow the mind into the nature of things.

Francis Bacon

Ideas are, in truth, forces. Infinite, too,is the power of personality. A union of the two always makes history.

Henry James, Jr.

"My thoughts are not your thoughts. For as high as the heavens are the above the earth, so are my thoughts above your thoughts, my ways above your ways." should be written over every pulpit. Because so often we think that God's ways are our ways. God's thoughts are our thoughts. And we created God in our own image and likeness saying, "God approves of this. God forbids that. God desires the other." This is where some of the worst atrocities of religion have come from. Because people have used [it] to give a sacred seal of a divine approval to some of their most worst hatreds, loathings, and fears. Whereas to the great theologians what I found when I was studying for A History Of God the great theologians in all three of the monotheistic religions, Jewish, Christian, Muslim all insisted that yes, God was personal. But God went beyond the personal. You shouldn't speak glibly about God in Judaism you may not speak God's name as a reminder that any human expression of the divine is likely to be so limited as to be blasphemous. But God should challenge your assumptions you shouldn't imagine you've got Him in your pocket.

Karen Armstrong

Advances in medicine and agriculture have saved vastly more lives than have been lost in all the wars in history.

Dr. Carl Sagan
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