History Quotes

History, to be above evasion or dispute, must stand on documents, not on opinions.

At a certain point one ceases to defend a certain view of history; one must defend history itself.

E. P. Thompson

[History is a] costly and superfluous luxury of the understanding.

Nietzsche

The history of the world is none other than the progress of the , consciousness of freedom.

Hegel

History is the recital of facts represented as true. Fable, on the other hand, is the recital of facts represented as fiction. The history of man's ideas is nothing more than the chronicle of human error.

Voltaire

History furnishes to politics all the arguments that it needs, for the chosen cause.

Romain Rolland

History within itself cannot be transcended. ... In history itself there are only relative victories.

Ernst Troeltsch

The value of history. ..is that it teaches us what man has done and thus what man is.

R. G. Collingwood

People are trapped in history, and history is trapped in them.

James Baldwin

One ceases to be lonely only in recollection; perhaps that is why people read history.

John Andrew Rice

History is full of delightful reversals, where the opposite of what one predicts comes true.

Edmund Carpenter

History does not belong to us; we belong to it.

Hans-Georg Gadamer

History proves nothing because it contains everything.

Emil Cioran

What else can history teach us? Only the vanity of believing we can impose our theories on history. Any philosophy which asserts that human experience repeats itself is ineffectual.

Jacques Ellul

A man rising in the world is not concerned with history; he is too busy making it. But a citizen with a fixed place in the community wants to acquire a glorious past just as he acquires antique furniture.

Malcolm Cowley

History is a set of lies agreed upon.

Napoleon Bonaparte

The history of the world is full of men who rose to leadership, by sheer force of self-confidence, bravery and tenacity.

Mahatma Gandhi

History is a pack of lies about events that never happened told by people who weren't there.

George Santayana

History, we can confidently assert, is useful in the sense that art and music, poetry and flowers, religion and philosophy are useful. Without it -- as with these -- life would be poorer and meaner; without it we should be denied some of those intellectual and moral experiences which give meaning and richness to life. Surely it is no accident that the study of history has been the solace of many of the noblest minds of every generation.

Henry Steele Commager

A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the sound of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance.

Jawaharial Nehru

I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge -- myth is more potent than history -- dreams are more powerful than facts -- hope always triumphs over experience -- laughter is the cure for grief -- love is stronger than death.

Robert Fulghum

To look back upon history is inevitably to distort it.

Norman Pearson

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

Winston Churchill

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