quotations about history
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.
FRANCIS BACON
The Advancement of Learning
History is on every occasion the record of what one age finds worthy of note in another.
JACOB BURCKHARDT
Judgements on History and Historians
If you didn't know history, you didn't know anything. You were a leaf that didn't know it was part of a tree.
MICHAEL CRICHTON
Timeline
History is only time furnished with dates and rich with events.
RIVAROL
attributed, Day's Collacon
A good knowledge of things past is an armour against events to come.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
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
History is a vast dust-heap of falsehood with a few pennies of truth scattered through it.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
History is written by the victors, but it's victims who write the memoirs.
CAROL TAVRIS & ELLIOT ARONSON
Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me)
History is nothing but assisted and recorded memory.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
The Life of Reason
Good history is a good foundation for a better present and future.
JOHN HOPE FRANKLIN
preface, Race and History: Selected Essays 1938-1988
History is philosophy teaching by example.
HENRY ST. JOHN BOLINGBROKE
Letters on the Study and Use of History
It is sometimes very hard to tell the difference between history and the smell of skunk.
REBECCA WEST
Black Lamb and Grey Falcon
The best historian lies like a mirror.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Men are not the causers of history. History itself, by a pressure of events, causes men to resort to particular actions.
TANITH LEE
The Gods are Thirsty
There is a history in all men's lives.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
King Henry IV, Part II
The charm of history and its enigmatic lesson consist in the fact that, from age to age, nothing changes and yet everything is completely different.
ALDOUS HUXLEY
The Devils of Loudun
The history that most abounds in important incidents, soonest assumes the aspect of antiquity.
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER
The Deerslayer
History is a relay of revolutions.
SAUL ALINSKY
Rules for Radicals
What dependence can I have on the alleged events of ancient history, when I find such difficulty in ascertaining the truth regarding a matter that has taken place only a few minutes ago, and almost in my own presence!
SIR WALTER RALEIGH
attributed, Testimony: Its Posture in the Scientific World
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