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History Quotes

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History Quotes

“British Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone spent his declining years trying to guess the answer to the Irish Question; unfortunately, whenever he was getting warm, the Irish secretly changed the Question.”

Trying Years Answers History Changed Humour Warm British Ministers Prime Prime Minister Gladstone

Author:W. C. Sellar

“Crown Prince Rupprecht, the heir to the throne of Bavaria who commanded the army group facing the British at the Somme, was the senior direct lineal heir of James Stuart, the Old Pretender of 1715. Had there been any Jacobites left in Britain in 1916, they would have had to regard this south German prince as their rightful king.”

Left History Groups Humour Kings Direct Army Regard South British Britain Crowns Thrones Senior Heirs Pretender

Author:David Frum

“With their own record of killing 12 million American Indians and supporting slavery for four decades after the British abolished it, Americans wish to project their historical guilt on to someone else.”

Wish History Millions Records Four Humour Projects Slavery Guilt Historical Killing British Decades American Indian

Author:Andrew Roberts

“But the desire of obtaining the advantages, and of escaping the burthens, of political society, is a perpetual and inexhaustible source of discord; nor can it reasonably be presumed that the restoration of British freedom was exempt from tumult and faction. The pre-eminence of birth and fortune must have been frequently violated by bold and popular citizens; and the haughty nobles, who complained that they were become the subjects of their own servants, would sometimes regret the reign of an arbitrary monarch.”

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

“The British soldier can stand up to anything except the British War Office.”

War History Office Soldier Witty British British Soldiers

Author:George Bernard Shaw

“In the end, history, especially British history with its succession of thrilling illuminations, should be, as all her most accomplished narrators have promised, not just instruction but pleasure.”

Should Ends Pleasure History British Accomplished Instruction Thrilling Illumination Succession British History Narrators

Book:A History of Britain: At the edge of the world? 3000 BC-AD 1603

Source: A History of Britain: At the edge of the world? 3000 BC-AD 1603

“Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour.'”

“Without history we are infants. Ask what binds the British Isles more closely to America than to Europe and only history gives a reply. Of all intellectual pursuits, history is the most supremely useful. That is why people crave it and need ever more of it.”

People Needs Giving America Asks History Intellectual Europe British Pursuit Infant Crave Isle

Author:Simon Jenkins