quotations about history
All great historical facts and personages occur, as it were, twice ... the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.
KARL MARX
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The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
History is a vast dust-heap of falsehood with a few pennies of truth scattered through it.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
A good knowledge of things past is an armour against events to come.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
No man is free of his own history.
ANITA BROOKNER
Latecomers
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
The more we know of history, the less shall we esteem the subjects of it.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
History is philosophy teaching by example.
HENRY ST. JOHN BOLINGBROKE
Letters on the Study and Use of History
Each day is a little bit of history.
JOSé SARAMAGO
Baltasar and Blimunda
The ideal historian goes to the mouth of the tomb, cries: "Lazarus, come forth!" and sets him that was dead for ages, blinking and passionate, in the sun.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
The people, and the people alone, are the motive force in the making of world history.
MAO ZEDONG
"On Coalition Government", Apr. 24, 1945
The historian's task is to present what actually happened. The more purely and completely he achieves this, the more perfectly has he solved this problem. A simple presentation is at the same time the primary indispensable condition of his work and the highest achievement he will be able to attain. Regarded in this way, he seems to be merely receptive and productive, not active and creative.
WILHELM VON HUMBOLDT
"The Historian's Task"
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
There is a history in all men's lives.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
King Henry IV, Part II
History is not fable agreed upon, but truth disagreed upon.
IVAN PANIN
Thoughts
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
History is not a suicide note -- it is a record of our survival.
JEANETTE WINTERSON
The Stone Gods
The best historian lies like a mirror.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Construed as a means instead of an end, history is the weapon with which we defend the future against the past.
LEWIS H. LAPHAM
Lapham's Quarterly, 2008
The history that most abounds in important incidents, soonest assumes the aspect of antiquity.
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER
The Deerslayer
History, we know, is apt to repeat itself, and to foist very old incidents upon us with only a slight change of costume.
GEORGE ELIOT
Janet's Repentance