HISTORY QUOTES VIII

quotations about history

History-writing is a way of getting rid of the past.

JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE

The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe

Tags: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe


The phenomena of history should be so recorded as to aid the reader, and particularly the young reader, in discovering its philosophy, instead of being recorded as they have hitherto generally been, in such a way as to obliterate the better instincts of humanity.

HORACE MANN

Thoughts

Tags: Horace Mann


History gets reinterpreted as time goes on. Many times, the participants are lost in the retelling of the story.

BUZZ ALDRIN

Esquire, Jan. 2003

Tags: Buzz Aldrin


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

Tags: Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel


The inflexible integrity of the moral code is, to me, the secret of the authority, the dignity, the utility of History. If we may debase the currency for the sake of genius, or success, or rank, or reputation, we may debase it for the sake of a man’s influence, of his religion, of his party, of the good cause which prospers by his credit and suffers by his disgrace. Then History ceases to be a science, an arbiter of controversy, a guide of the Wanderer, the upholder of that moral standard which the powers of earth and religion itself tend constantly to depress. It serves where it ought to reign; and it serves the worst cause better than the purest.

LORD ACTON

letter to Mandell Creighton, Apr. 5, 1887


Just as the human memory is not a passive recorder but a tool in the construction of the self, so history has never been a simple record of the past, but a means of shaping peoples.

ARTHUR C. CLARKE

The Light of Other Days

Tags: Arthur C. Clarke


History is the autobiography of a madman.

ALEXANDER HERZEN

Dr. Krupov

Tags: Alexander Herzen


The inner reality of history is so unlike the back of the cards, and it takes so long to get at it, which does not prevent us from disbelieving what is current as history, but makes us wish to sift it, and dig through mud to solid foundations.

LORD ACTON

letter to Mary Gladstone, September 21, 1880


History can come in handy. If you were born yesterday, with no knowledge of the past, you might easily accept whatever the government tells you. But knowing a bit of history--while it would not absolutely prove the government was lying in a given instance--might make you skeptical, lead you to ask questions, make it more likely that you would find out the truth.

HOWARD ZINN

You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train

Tags: Howard Zinn


Nowhere is it ordained that history moves in a straight line.

BARACK OBAMA

The Audacity of Hope

Tags: Barack Obama


History, with scarcely an exception, ought to be rewritten.

HORACE MANN

Thoughts

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History is replete with the bleached bones of nations.

MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.

speech delivered at the Great March on Detroit, June 23, 1963

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Historians exercise great power and some of them know it. They recreate the past, changing it to fit their own interpretations. Thus, they change the future as well.

FRANK HERBERT

Heretics of Dune

Tags: Frank Herbert


Any true student must realize that History has no beginning. Regardless of where a story starts, there are always earlier heroes and earlier tragedies.

BRIAN HERBERT & KEVIN J. ANDERSON

The Butlerian Jihad

Tags: Brian Herbert


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 unto the nature of things. And we see that by these insinuations and congruities with man's nature and pleasure, joined also with the agreement and consort it hath with music, it hath had access and estimation in rude times and barbarous regions, where other learning stood excluded.

FRANCIS BACON

The Advancement of Learning

Tags: Francis Bacon


On the breast of that huge Mississippi of falsehood called History, a foam-bell more or less is no consequence.

MATTHEW ARNOLD

"Literary Influence of Academies", Essays in Criticism


History isn't the lies of the victors, as I once glibly assured Old Joe Hunt; I know that now. It's more the memories of the survivors, most of whom are neither victorious or defeated.

JULIAN BARNES

The Sense of an Ending

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There is no history worthy attention save that of free nations; the history of nations under the sway of despotism is no more than a collection of anecdotes.

CHAMFORT

The Cynic's Breviary


History. It has always vaguely interested him, that sinister mulch of facts our little lives grow out of before joining the mulch themselves, the fragile brown rotting layers of previous deaths.

JOHN UPDIKE

Rabbit at Rest


The historian's duty is to separate the true from the false, the certain from the uncertain, and the doubtful from that which cannot be accepted.

JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE

The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe

Tags: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe