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History, n. an account mostly false, of events mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools.
AMBROSE BIERCE, The Devil's Dictionary
The history of the world is but the biography of great men.
THOMAS CARLYLE, Heroes and Hero-Worship, The Hero as Divinity
History ... is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.
EDWARD GIBBON, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors and issues.
The very ink with which all history is written is merely fluid prejudice.
MARK TWAIN, Following the Equator
Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.
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
History is more or less bunk.
HENRY FORD, Chicago Tribune, May 25, 1916
To remain ignorant of things that happened before you were born is to remain a child.
To study history means submitting to chaos and nevertheless retaining faith in order and meaning. It is a very serious task, young man, and possibly a tragic one.
HERMANN HESSE, The Glass Bead Game
Psychology keeps trying to vindicate human nature. History keeps undermining the effort.
MASON COOLEY, City Aphorisms
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
GEORGE SANTAYANA, The Life of Reason
The memories of men are too frail a thread to hang history from.
JOHN STILL, The Jungle Tide
History fades into fable; fact becomes clouded with doubt and controversy; the inscription molders from the tablet: the statue falls from the pedestal. Columns, arches, pyramids, what are they but heaps of sand; and their epitaphs, but characters written in the dust?
WASHINGTON IRVING, The Sketch Book
History can be well written only in a free country.
VOLTAIRE, letter to Frederick the Great
What experience and history teach is this -- that people and governments never have learned anything from history or acted on the principles deduced from it.
G.W.F. HEGEL, Philosophy of History
It is difficult at times to repress the thought that history is about as instructive as an abattoir.
SEAMUS HEANEY, Nobel Lecture, Dec. 7, 1995
History is philosophy teaching by examples.
THUCYDIDES, The History of the Peloponnesian War
All great historical facts and personages occur, as it were, twice ... the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.
KARL MARX, The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
Great men are the inspired texts of that divine Book of Revelations, whereof a chapter is completed from epoch to epoch, and by some named History.
THOMAS CARLYLE, Sartor Resartus
History is the autobiography of a madman.
ALEXANDER HERZEN, Dr. Krupov
I'm interested in the way in which the past affects the present and I think that if we understand a good deal more about history, we automatically understand a great more about contemporary life.
TONI MORRISON, Time interview, Jan. 21, 1998
History ... is a nightmare from which I am trying to wake.
The history of mankind is a romance, a mask, a tragedy, constructed upon the principles of POETICAL JUSTICE; it is a noble or royal hunt, in which what is sport to the few is death to the many, and in which the spectators halloo and encourage the strong to set upon the weak, and cry havoc in the chase, though they do not share in the spoil.
WILLIAM HAZLITT, Characters of Shakespeare's Plays
Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.
H.G. WELLS, The Outline of History
All true histories contain instruction; though, in some, the treasure may be hard to find, and when found, so trivial in quantity that the dry, shrivelled kernel scarcely compensates for the trouble of cracking the nut.
Nothing has really happened until it has been recorded.
History is written by the winners.
ALEX HALEY, as quoted in And I Quote
Old men can make war, but it is children who will make history.
RAY MERRITT, Full of Grace
The only history that is worth a tinker's damn is the history we make today.
HENRY FORD, Chicago Tribune, May 25, 1916
I don't believe ... that history repeats itself. There is no cycle. History is permanently doing the same thing. Sometimes we don't notice what's going on, that's all--and sometimes we have no choice but to see.
MICHAEL MARSHALL, Blood of Angels
Nowhere is it ordained that history moves in a straight line.
BARACK OBAMA, The Audacity of Hope
Half the things you've been taught in school are just convenient fictions. History is a puppet show for childish minds.
JOHN TWELVE HAWKS, The Traveler
We cannot escape history.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN, annual message, Dec. 1, 1862
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