History Quotes

History is the enactment of ritual on a permanent and universal stage; and its perpetual commemoration.

Norman O. Brown

History is a great deal closer to poetry than is generally realised: in truth, I think, it is in essence the same.

A. L. Rowse

History will die if not irritated. The only service I can do to my profession is to serve as a flea.

Henry Adams

There is a history in all men's lives.

William Shakespeare

Few will have the greatness to bend history itself; but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation.

Robert Francis Kennedy

If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten.

Rudyard Kipling

History is the ship carrying living memories to the future

Stephen Spender

People always seemed to know half of history, and to get it confused with the other half.

Jane Haddam

The history of all times, and of today especially, teaches that ... women will be forgotten if they forget to think about themselves.

Louise Otto

History is the distillation of rumour.

Thomas Carlyle

[History is] not factual at all, but a series of accepted judgments.

Geoffrey Barraclough

Patriotism ruins history.

Goethe

History does nothing; it does not possess immense riches, it does not fight battles. It is men, real, living, who do all this

Karl Marx

History is the essence of innumerable biographies.

Thomas Carlyle

In mass societies, myth takes the place of history.

William Bosenbrook