quotations about history
History is instructive. And what it suggests to people is that even if they do little things, if they walk on the picket line, if they join a vigil, if they write a letter to their local newspaper. Anything they do, however small, becomes part of a much, much larger sort of flow of energy. And when enough people do enough things, however small they are, then change takes place.
HOWARD ZINN
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interview, Rawstory, Sep. 9, 2005
History makes haste to record great deeds, but often neglects good ones.
HOSEA BALLOU
attributed, Treasury of Thought
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 not like some individual person, which uses men to achieve its ends. History is nothing but the actions of men in pursuit of their ends.
KARL MARX
Die Heilige Familie
History admits no rules, only outcomes.
DAVID MITCHELL
Cloud Atlas
At any rate, the pre-historic times were spent in making men capable of writing a history, and having something to put in it when it is written, and we can see how it was done.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Physics and Politics
Tell me the Acts, O historian, and leave me to reason upon them as I please; away with your reasoning and your rubbish. All that is not action is not worth reading.
WILLIAM BLAKE
Blake's Exhibition and Catalogue of 1809, A Descriptive Catalogue of Pictures: Number V. The Ancient Britons
No generation can escape history.
GEORGE H. W. BUSH
commencement address at Texas A&M University, May 12, 1989
History can be well written only in a free country.
VOLTAIRE
letter to Frederick the Great
History is on every occasion the record of what one age finds worthy of note in another.
JACOB BURCKHARDT
Judgements on History and Historians
History, like God, is watching what we do.
BONO
remarks at National Prayer Breakfast, Feb. 2, 2006
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
It is sometimes very hard to tell the difference between history and the smell of skunk.
REBECCA WEST
Black Lamb and Grey Falcon
I long for the time when all the human history is taught as one history, because it really is one history.
MAYA ANGELOU
Facebook post, Feb. 28, 2013
History is a compendium of uncertainties.
E. P. DAY
Day's Collacon
To remain ignorant of things that happened before you were born is to remain a child.
CICERO
All you have learned from history is old ways of making mistakes. There is nothing that history can tell you about what we must do tomorrow. Only what we must not do.
EDWIN H. LAND
address to Polaroid Corporation employees at Symphony Hall in Boston, February 5, 1960
The history of the race is but that of the individual "writ large".
GEORGE HENRY LEWES
The Foundations of a Creed
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
Good history is a good foundation for a better present and future.
JOHN HOPE FRANKLIN
preface, Race and History: Selected Essays 1938-1988