quotations about history
History gets reinterpreted as time goes on. Many times, the participants are lost in the retelling of the story.
BUZZ ALDRIN
Esquire, Jan. 2003
History-writing is a way of getting rid of the past.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
History is the same thing over and over again.
WOODY ALLEN
interview, Der Spiegel, Jun. 20, 2005
The historian's duty is to separate the true from the false, the certain from the uncertain, and the doubtful from that which cannot be accepted.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
History isn't the lies of the victors, as I once glibly assured Old Joe Hunt; I know that now. It's more the memories of the survivors, most of whom are neither victorious or defeated.
JULIAN BARNES
The Sense of an Ending
History, like love, is so apt to surround her heroes with an atmosphere of imaginary brightness.
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER
The Last of the Mohicans
The business of the historian is with the truth of things, but he is too much under temptation to make his history interesting, to be always able to reject a fine story.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
The great historian is he that can distinguish what is done from what happens.
IVAN PANIN
Thoughts
There is no history worthy attention save that of free nations; the history of nations under the sway of despotism is no more than a collection of anecdotes.
CHAMFORT
The Cynic's Breviary
What experience and history teach is this -- that people and governments never have learned anything from history or acted on the principles deduced from it.
G.W.F. HEGEL
Philosophy of History
The true science of history, for instance, does not yet exist; scarcely do we begin to-day to catch a glimpse of its extremely complicated conditions. But suppose it were definitely developed, what could it give us? It would exhibit a faithful and rational picture of the natural development of the general conditions--material and ideal, economical, political and social, religious, philosophical, aesthetic, and scientific--of the societies which have a history. But this universal picture of human civilization, however detailed it might be, would never show anything beyond general and consequently abstract estimates. The milliards of individuals who have furnished the living and suffering materials of this history at once triumphant and dismal--triumphant by its general results, dismal by the immense hecatomb of human victims "crushed under its car"--those milliards of obscure individuals without whom none of the great abstract results of history would have been obtained--and who, bear in mind, have never benefited by any of these results--will find no place, not even the slightest, in our annals. They have lived and been sacrificed, crushed for the good of abstract humanity, that is all.
MIKHAIL BAKUNIN
God and the State
To study history means submitting to chaos and nevertheless retaining faith in order and meaning. It is a very serious task, young man, and possibly a tragic one.
HERMANN HESSE
The Glass Bead Game
Faithful, well-written history is a map, in which we trace the winding ways and manifold wonders of divine Providence.
JOHN THORNTON
Maxims and Directions for Youth
Any true student must realize that History has no beginning. Regardless of where a story starts, there are always earlier heroes and earlier tragedies.
BRIAN HERBERT & KEVIN J. ANDERSON
The Butlerian Jihad
History is written by the winners.
ALEX HALEY
attributed, And I Quote
Just as the human memory is not a passive recorder but a tool in the construction of the self, so history has never been a simple record of the past, but a means of shaping peoples.
ARTHUR C. CLARKE
The Light of Other Days
The vividness and force with which we trace the motion of history depends on the degree to which we look beyond persons and fix our gaze on things.
LORD ACTON
letter to Mary Gladstone, March 15, 1880
Every historian has described the age in which he happened to write, as the worst, because he has only heard of the wickedness of other times, but has felt and seen that of his own.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
Many scholars have complained of our tendency to see history only in conflicts, but I am not convinced they are right. It is in conflict that our values are exposed.
BERNARD BECKETT
Genesis
Old men can make war, but it is children who will make history.
RAY MERRITT
Full of Grace