Quotessence
Home / Topics / History Quotes

History Quotes

Browse 6202 quotes about History.

Related topics

MenArtPhilosophyIfsPastWarWorldPeopleHistoricalHumansHistorianKnowsMayRoman EmpireDoeThinkingScienceHas BeensNationsWritingFactsWayInspirationalWorld HistoryAmerican Civil WarCivil WarShouldEventsYearsAgeMindFirstsPoliticalGenerationsWantBritish HistoryHumourWholeCountryGivingWomenLifeMadeBelievePoliticsStatesLongMotivationalEndsWisdomAmericaNazi GermanyCenturyFunnyHandsLawMemoriesNazismFormLittlesMankindNeedsRaceRealStudyGovernmentLyingRealityWrittenCharacterCoursesHeartPrinciplesSeemsTwoBookIdeasIndividualLiteratureWellsMeanMightStillsActionCivilizationDoneLooksPersonsStoriesTeachBloodEnemyEyeMilitaryOrderRecordsViewsHappenedImportantReasonmore

History Quotes

“To each eye, perhaps, the outlines of a great civilization present a different picture. In the wide ocean upon which we venture, the possible ways and directions are many; and the same studies which have served for my work might easily, in other hands, not only receive a wholly different treatment and application, but lead to essentially different conclusions.”

WayDifferentHandsMightEyeHistoryStudyCivilizationOceanWideConclusionTreatmentApplicationVentureOutlines
Author:Jacob Burckhardt
Create image

“Faithfulness to the truth of history involves far more than a research, however patient and scrupulous, into special facts. Such facts may be detailed with the most minute exactness, and yet the narrative, taken as a whole, may be unmeaning or untrue. The narrator must seek to imbue himself with the life and spirit of the time. He must study events in their bearings near and remote; in the character, habits, and manners of those who took part in them. He must himself be, as it were, a sharer or a spectator of the action he describes.”

MayWholeCharacterFactsActionSpiritHistoryStudyTakenMinutesSpecialEventsHabitResearchPatientMannersNarrativeFaithfulnessSpectatorsUntrueNarratorsExactness
Book:France and England in North America: Pioneers of France in the New World. The Jesuits of North America in the seventeenth century. La Salle and the discovery of the Great West. The old régime in Canada
Create image

“The study of history is the best medicine for a sick mind; for in history you have a record of the infinite variety of human experience plainly set out for all to see; and in that record you can find yourself and your country both examples and warnings; fine things to take as models, base things rotten through and through, to avoid.”

InspirationalMindHumansCountryWisdomMotivationalHistoryStudyRecordsExampleFineWise WordsWords Of WisdomModelsExperienceSickInfiniteMedicineVarietyFinding YourselfWarningAvoidingHuman ExperienceRottenFine Things
Book:The History of Early Rome
Create image

“History is for human self-knowledge. Knowing yourself means knowing, first, what it is to be a person; secondly, knowing what it is to be the kind of person you are; and thirdly, knowing what it is to be the person you are and nobody else is. Knowing yourself means knowing what you can do; and since nobody knows what they can do until they try, the only clue to what man can do is what man has done. The value of history, then, is that it teaches us what man has done and thus what man is.”

KnowsMenTryingFirstsHumansKindMeanPersonsSelfDoneValuesCan DoTeachHistoryKnowingSelf KnowledgeClueKnow YourselfNobody KnowsValue Of History
Author:Robin G. Collingwood
Create image

“That historians should give their own country a break, I grant you; but not so as to state things contrary to fact. For there are plenty of mistakes made by writers out of ignorance, and which any man finds it difficult to avoid. But if we knowingly write what is false, whether for the sake of our country or our friends or just to be pleasant, what difference is there between us and hack writers? Readers should be very attentive to and critical of historians, and they in turn should be constantly on their guard.”

IfsMenGivingShouldWritingMadeCountryStatesFactsTurnsDifficultFriendshipDifferencesMistakeBreakHistoryIgnoranceReaderDiversitySocial JusticeSakeCriticalContraryOur CountryPlentyPleasantGrantsHistorianHacks
Author:Polybius
Create image

“Time in its irresistible and ceaseless flow carries along on its flood all created things and drowns them in the depths of obscurity. . . . But the tale of history forms a very strong bulwark against the stream of time, and checks in some measure its irresistible flow, so that, of all things done in it, as many as history has taken over it secures and binds together, and does not allow them to slip away into the abyss of oblivion.”

DoeDoneTogetherFormStrongHistoryTakenFlowAll ThingsDepthChecksTalesStreamsCarrieOver ItSlipsVery StrongFloodAbyssOblivionIrresistibleObscurityThings Done
Author:Anna Komnene
Create image

“Rulers, Statesmen, Nations, are wont to be emphatically commended to the teaching which experience offers in history. But what experience and history teach is this - that people and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it. Each period is involved in such peculiar circumstances, exhibits a condition of things so strictly idiosyncratic, that its conduct must be regulated by considerations connected with itself, and itself alone.”

PeopleGovernmentNationsPrinciplesTeachHistoryTeachingConditionsInvolvedPeriodsCircumstancesOffersConnectedConsiderationPeculiarRulersStatesmenExhibits
Book:Reading Hegel: The Introductions
Create image

“Human nature will not change. In any future great national trial, compared with the men of this, we shall have as weak and as strong, as silly and as wise, as bad and as good. Let us therefore study the incidents in this as philosophy to learn wisdom from and none of them as wrongs to be avenged.”

MenHumansPhilosophyStrongHistoryStudyWiseHuman NatureHe ManWeakSillyTrialsIncidentsUs History
Book:The Complete Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln (Biographically Annotated Edition)
Create image

“In history, a great volume is unrolled for our instruction, drawing the materials of future wisdom from the past errors and infirmities of mankind.”

WisdomPastHistoryMankindMaterialsErrorsDrawingInstructionVolumeUs HistoryInfirmityGreat History
Book:Reflections on the Revolution in France: And on the Proceedings in Certain Societies in London Relative to that Event. In a Letter Intended to Have Been Sent to a Gentleman in Paris
Create image

“Mankind are so much the same, in all times and places, that history informs us of nothing new or strange in this particular. Its chief use is only to discover the constant and universal principles of human nature.”

HumansUsePrinciplesHistoryMankindHuman NatureParticularStrangeUniversalConstantAll TimeChiefsUs HistoryNothing New
Book:An inquiry concerning human understanding. A dissertation on the passions. An inquiry concerning the principles of morals. The natural history of religion
Create image

“Animals are molded by natural forces they do not comprehend. To their minds there is no past and no future. There is only the everlasting present of a single generation, its trails in the forest, its hidden pathways in the the air and in the sea. There is nothing in the Universe more alone than Man. He has entered into the strange world of history.”

MenWorldMindPastUniverseForceNaturalAnimalHistoryGenerationsAirSeaStrangeForestsEverlastingTrailsPathwaysStrange World
Author:Loren Eiseley
Create image

“The poetry of history lies in the quasi-miraculous fact that once, on this earth, once, on this familiar spot of ground, walked other men and women, as actual as we are today, thinking their own thoughts, swayed by their own passions, but now all gone, one generation vanishing into another, gone as utterly as we ourselves shall shortly be gone, like ghosts at cockcrow.”

ThinkingMenFactsTruthTodayEarthLyingPassionHistoryGoneGenerationsMen And WomenGhostFamiliarSpotsMiraculousVanishingHistory Lies
Author:G. M. Trevelyan
Create image

“Civilization is a stream with banks. The stream is sometimes filled with blood from people killing, stealing, shouting and doing the things historians usually record, while on the banks, unnoticed, people build homes, make love, raise children, sing songs, write poetry and even whittle statues. The story of civilization is what happened on the banks.”

PeopleLoveWritingChildrenSometimesStoriesHomeMotivationalFaithSongCommunityHistoryRecordsHappenedBloodSocietyCivilizationRaisesFilledKillingStealingStreamsHistorianMaking LoveStatuesShoutingUnnoticed
Author:Will Durant
Create image

“History is always written wrong, and so always needs to be rewritten. ...What is interesting is brought forward as if it had been central and efficacious in the march of events, and harmonies are turned into causes. Kings and generals are endowed with motives appropriate to what the historian values in their actions; plans are imputed to them prophetic of their actual achievements, while the thoughts that really preoccupied them remain buried in absolute oblivion.”

IfsNeedsActionValuesCausesInterestingHistoryPlansWrittenEventsKingsAchievementAbsolutesHarmonyHistoricalPlanningMotiveAppropriateMarchBuriedHistorianOblivionProphetic
Book:The Life of Reason: Human Understanding
Create image