Home / Topics / History Quotes

History Quotes

Browse 6202 quotes about History.

History Quotes

“We have a wonderful history behind us. ... If you are unable to demonstrate to the world that you have this record, the world will say to you, 'You are not worthy to enjoy the blessings of democracy or anything else'.”

Ifs World Enjoy Behinds History Democracy Records Wonderful Blessing Worthy African American American History Not Worthy

Author:Carter G. Woodson

“The great eventful Present hides the Past; but through the din Of its loud life hints and echoes from the life behind steal in.”

Past Behinds History Stealing Loud Echoes Hints

Book:Poems of John Greenleaf Whittier

Source: Poems of John Greenleaf Whittier

“The selective winnowing of time leaves only a few recognizable individuals behind for the historian to light on. Thus the historian who finds the human being more interesting than what the human being has done must inevitably endow the comparatively few individuals he can identify with too great an importance in relation to their time. Even so, I prefer this overestimate to the opposite method which treats developments as though they were the massive anonymous waves of an unhuman sea or pulverizes the fallible surviving records of human life into the grey dust of statistics.”

“His manners were less pure, but his character was equally amiable with that of his father. Twenty-two acknowledged concubines, and a library of sixty-two thousand volumes, attested the variety of his inclinations, and from the productions which he left behind him, it appears that the former as well as the latter were designed for use rather than ostentation.”

Source: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

“Are we to paint what's on the face, what's inside the face, or what's behind it?”

Life Beautiful Faces Behinds Beauty Creativity History Paint

Author:Pablo Picasso

“These are the things before me. And as I stand here at the door of glory, I look behind me for the last time. I look upon the history of men, which I have learned from the books, and I wonder. It was a long story, and the spirit which moved it was the spirit of man’s freedom. But what is freedom? Freedom from what? There is nothing to take a man’s freedom away from him, save other men. To be free, a man must be free of his brothers. That is freedom. This and nothing else.”

Source: Study Guide: Anthem (Study Gudie and Book)

“If men could learn from history, what lessons it might teach us. But passion and party blind our eyes, and the light which experience gives us is a lantern on the stern, which shines only on the waves behind us.”

Ifs Men Giving Light Might Eye Passion Party Behinds Teach History Learning Lessons Experience Blind Shining Wave Lanterns Lantern Light

Author:Samuel Taylor Coleridge

“Man is a history-making creature, who can neither repeat his past, nor leave it behind.”

Men Past Behinds History Creatures Historical Repeats History Making

Author:W. H. Auden

“The works which this man [Joseph Banks] leaves behind him occupy a few pages only; their importance is not greatly superior to their extent; and yet his name will shine out with lustre in the history of the sciences.”

Men Science Names Behinds History Hard Work Pages Accounts Importance Shining Superiors

Author:Georges Cuvier