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History quotes

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“History is moving pretty quickly these days and the heroes and villains keep on changing parts.” Ian Fleming, “Casino Royale” - 1953

“History . . . is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.” James Joyce, “Ulysses” - 1922

“history is filled with brilliant people who wanted to fix things and just made them worse.” Chuck Palahniuk, “Lullaby” - 2002

“The past is whatever the records and the memories agree upon.” George Orwell, “1984” - 1949

“Great is the power of steady misrepresentation; but the history of science shows that fortunately this power does not long endure.” Charles Darwin, “On The Origin of Species” - 1859

“After all, there are more valid facts and details in works of art than there are in history books.” Charlie Chaplin, “My Autobiography” - 1964

“With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds; let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God's work must truly be our own.” John F. Kennedy, “Inaugural Address” - 20 January 1961

“The Register of Knowledge Of Fact is called History.” Thomas Hobbes, “Leviathan” - 1651

“Anybody can make history. Only a great man can write it.” Oscar Wilde, “Intentions” - 1891

“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” - 1906

“The people, and the people alone, are the motive force in the making of world history.” Mao Zedong, “Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung” - 1964

“No matter what he does, every person on earth plays a central role in the history of the world. And normally he doesn't know it.” Paulo Coelho, “The Alchemist” - 1988

“The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we...” Abraham Lincoln, “State of the Union Address” - 1 December 1862

“History knows no resting places and no plateaus.” Henry Kissinger, “White House Years” - 1979

“And out of that hopeless attempt has come nearly all that we call human history—money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery—the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him...” C. S. Lewis, “Mere Christianity” - 1952

“peoples and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.” Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, “Lectures on the Philosophy of History” - 1837

“Histories make men wise; poets witty; the mathematics subtile; natural philosophy deep; moral grave; logic and rhetoric able to contend.” Francis Bacon, “The Essays of Francis Bacon” - 1597

“the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.” George Eliot, “Middlemarch” - 1872

“History suggests only that capitalism is a necessary condition for political freedom. Clearly it is not a sufficient condition.” Milton Friedman, “Capitalism and Freedom” - 1962

“Poetry, therefore, is a more philosophical and a higher thing than history: for poetry tends to express the universal, history the particular.” Aristotle, “Poetics” - c. 335 BC

“Classes struggle, some classes triumph, others are eliminated. Such is history, such is the history of civilization for thousands of years.” Mao Zedong, “Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung” - 1964

“History is as light as individual human life, unbearably light, light as a feather, as dust swirling into the air, as whatever will no longer exist tomorrow.” Milan Kundera, “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” - 1984

“We were kids without fathers, so we found our fathers on wax and on the streets and in history, and in a way, that was a gift: We got to pick and choose the ancestors who would inspire the world we were going to make for ourselves.” JAY-Z, “Decoded” - 2010

“This is what historians usually do, quibble about cause and effect when the point is, there are times when the world is in flux and the right voice in the right place can move the world.” Orson Scott Card, “Ender's Game” - 1985

“The important thing to understand about American history . . . is that it is fictional, a charcoal-sketched simplicity for the children, or the easily bored.” Neil Gaiman, “American Gods” - 2001

“The History of the World, I said already, was the Biography of Great Men.” Thomas Carlyle, “On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and The Heroic in History” - 1841

“She had always been fond of history, and here was history in the stones of the street and the atoms of the sunshine.” Henry James, “The Portrait of a Lady” - 1881

“There are only patterns, patterns on top of patterns, patterns that affect other patterns. Patterns hidden by patterns. Patterns within patterns. If you watch close, history does nothing but repeat itself.” Chuck Palahniuk, “Survivor” - 1999

“Dead history is writ in ink, the living sort in blood.” George R. R. Martin, “A Feast for Crows” - 2005

“History has informed us that bodies of men, as well as individuals, are susceptible of the spirit of tyranny.” Thomas Jefferson, “A Summary View of the Rights of British America” - 1774

Related topics

past philosophy world greatness change poetry science street men wisdom life conscience God knowledge time happiness fiction freedom rest memory

Related authors

Chuck Palahniuk (2)
Mao Zedong (2)
Oscar Wilde (1)
James Joyce (1)
George R. R. Martin (1)
George Orwell (1)
George Eliot (1)
C. S. Lewis (1)
Abraham Lincoln (1)
Charles Darwin (1)
Paulo Coelho (1)
Aristotle (1)
Thomas Carlyle (1)
Henry James (1)
Francis Bacon (1)
Ambrose Bierce (1)
Thomas Jefferson (1)
Charlie Chaplin (1)
Neil Gaiman (1)
Henry Kissinger (1)

Related sources

Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung (2)
1984 (1)
Middlemarch (1)
Mere Christianity (1)
State of the Union Address (1)
On The Origin of Species (1)
The Alchemist (1)
On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and The Heroic in History (1)
The Portrait of a Lady (1)
The Essays of Francis Bacon (1)
Inaugural Address (1)
The Devil's Dictionary (1)
A Summary View of the Rights of British America (1)
My Autobiography (1)
American Gods (1)
White House Years (1)
The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1)
Ender's Game (1)
Casino Royale (1)
Decoded (1)