History Quotes

The principle office of history I take to be this: to prevent virtuous actions from being forgotten, and that evil words and deeds should fear an infamous reputation with posterity.

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

George Santayana (1863-1952) American philosopher, poet.

History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.

Every time history repeats itself the price goes up.

Anonymous.

History is Philosophy teaching by examples.

But what experience and historian teach is this that peoples and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted on the principles deduced from it.

George Hegel (1770-1831) German philosopher.

History is bunk.

Henry Ford (1863-1947) American industrialist.

There is nothing new in the world except the history you do not know.

Harry S.Truman (1884-1972) American President.

Only the history of free people is worth our attention; the history of men under a despotism is merely a collection of anecdotes.

The essential matter of history is not what happened but what people thought or said about it.

History, a distillation of Rumour.

Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) Scottish author.

Ancient histories are but fables that have been agreed upon.

Voltaire (1694-1778) French philosopher, author.

History is the crystallization of popular beliefs.

Donn Piatt (1819-1891) American journalist.

Gossip is none the less gossip because it comes from venerable antiquity.

Mandell Creighton (1843-1901) English Prelate, historian.

If a man could say nothing against a character but what he can prove, history could not be written.

History is better written from letters… no public character has ever stood the revelation of private utterance and correspondence.

Lord Acton (1843-1902) English historian.

The so called lessons of history are for the most part the rationalization of the victors. History is written but the survivors.

Max Lerner (b.1902) American academic.

History. An account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rules, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools.

Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914) American author.

History, which is, indeed, little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.

Edward Gibbon (1737-1794) English historian.

The history of the world is the record of a man in quest of his daily bread and butter.

Hendrik Van Loon (1882-1944) American journalist, historian.

Who has fully realized that history is not contained in thick books but lives in our very blood?

Carl Jung (1875-1961) Swiss psychiatrist.

English history is all about men liking their fathers, and American history is all about men hating their fathers and trying to burn down everything they every did.

Malcolm Bradbury (b.1932) British author.

That great dust heap called “history”.

Angustine Birrell (1850-1933) British Liberal politician.

History is philosophy teaching by example, and also by warning; its two eyes are geography and chronology.

History is but the unrolled scroll of prophecy.

Garfield.

All history is a lie.

Sir R. Walpole.

History is a voice forever sounding across the centuries the laws of right and wrong; Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise and fall, but the moral law is written on the tablets of eternity.

Froude.