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“history is filled with brilliant people who wanted to fix things and just made them worse.” Chuck Palahniuk, Lullaby
“History is moving pretty quickly these days and the heroes and villains keep on changing parts.” Ian Fleming, Casino Royale
“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
“The past is whatever the records and the memories agree upon.” George Orwell, 1984
“History . . . is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.” James Joyce, Ulysses
“Poetry, therefore, is a more philosophical and a higher thing than history: for poetry tends to express the universal, history the particular.” Aristotle, Poetics
“History knows no resting places and no plateaus.” Henry Kissinger, White House Years
“The Register of Knowledge Of Fact is called History.” Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan
“Dead history is writ in ink, the living sort in blood.” George R. R. Martin, A Feast for Crows
“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
“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
“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
“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
“I wasn't interested in world history, only my own.” Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye
“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
“History has the relation to truth that theology has to religion—i.e., none to speak of.” Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love
“there are more valid facts and details in works of art than there are in history books.” Charlie Chaplin, My Autobiography
“The people, and the people alone, are the motive force in the making of world history.” Mao Zedong, Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung
“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
“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
“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
“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
“Anybody can make history. Only a great man can write it.” Oscar Wilde, Intentions
“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
“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
“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
“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
“History suggests only that capitalism is a necessary condition for political freedom. Clearly it is not a sufficient condition.” Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom
“If at times our actions seem to make life difficult for others, it is only because history has made life difficult for us all.” John F. Kennedy, State of the Union Address
“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
“The laws of history are as absolute as the laws of physics, and if the probabilities of error are greater, it is only because history does not deal with as many humans as physics does atoms, so that individual variations count for more.” Isaac Asimov, Foundation and Empire
“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
“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
“Man lives consciously for himself, but is an unconscious instrument in the attainment of the historic, universal, aims of humanity.” Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
“a city like Paris is perpetually growing. It is only such cities that become capitals. They are funnels, into which all the geographical, political, moral, and intellectual water-sheds of a country, all the natural slopes of a people, pour; wells...” Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame
“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

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philosophy freedom science wisdom conscience fiction poetry world change past greatness street logic moral happiness life God learning men knowledge

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Henry Kissinger (1)
John F. Kennedy (2)
Chuck Palahniuk (2)
Mao Zedong (2)
Francis Bacon (1)
George Orwell (1)
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Charles Darwin (1)
Milton Friedman (1)
Aristotle (1)
Leo Tolstoy (1)
Oscar Wilde (1)
James Joyce (1)
Paulo Coelho (1)
Abraham Lincoln (1)
Isaac Asimov (1)
George R. R. Martin (1)
Neil Gaiman (1)
C. S. Lewis (1)
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Related sources

State of the Union Address (2)
Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung (2)
The Essays of Francis Bacon (1)
Poetics (1)
Lullaby (1)
On The Origin of Species (1)
1984 (1)
Ulysses (1)
The Alchemist (1)
The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1)
Intentions (1)
Mere Christianity (1)
White House Years (1)
Decoded (1)
War and Peace (1)
Middlemarch (1)
Ham on Rye (1)
Capitalism and Freedom (1)
My Autobiography (1)
The Portrait of a Lady (1)