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

“Although it is tempting to imagine an ancient era innocent of biochemical weaponry, in fact this Pandora's box of horrors was opened thousands of years ago. The history of making war with biological weapons begins in mythology, in ancient oral traditions that preserved records of actual events and ideas of the era before the invention of written histories.”

YearsIdeasWarFactsHistoryRecordsImagineWrittenEventsHorrorWeaponsYears AgoTraditionAncientBoxesMythologyInventionInnocentErasTemptingWeaponryPandoraBiological WeaponsOral TraditionPandora's BoxWritten History
Author:Adrienne Mayor
Create image

“In astronomy, the law of gravitation is plainly better worth knowing than the position of a particular planet on a particular night, or even on every night throughout a year. There are in the law a splendour and simplicity and sense of mastery which illuminate a mass of otherwise uninteresting details. But in history the matter is far otherwise. Historical facts, many of them, have an intrinsic value, a profound interest on their own account, which makes them worthy of study, quite apart from any possibility of linking them together by means of causal laws.”

YearsMeanMatterFactsTogetherLawScienceNightValuesInterestHistoryKnowingStudyPossibilityPositionParticularPlanetsMassAccountsHistoricalProfoundSimplicityDetailsWorthyAstronomyMasteryEvery NightSplendourIntrinsic ValueGravitationHistorical Facts
Author:Bertrand Russell
Create image

“It is a law of nature that everything run by the government will get more expensive and worse over time. Everything run by the private sector will get better and cheaper over time. The fact that [Obamacare] starts this badly does not bode well....We want healthcare run on the same system that gave us cell phones, flat screens, Jerry Garcia chia pets. Everything you submit to the free market...keeps getting better and better.”

WantWellsDoeFactsRealityGovernmentRunningLawPoliticalPoliticsMoneyPartyHistoryTechnologyDemocracyHuman NatureHealthCapitalismPhonesScreensIdeologyCellsGet BetterExpensivePetFlatsHealthcareSubmitConsumerismPolitical PartiesFree MarketLaws Of NatureCell PhoneObamacareCheaperPrivate SectorJerry
Author:Ann Coulter
Create image

“Americans, more than most people, believe that history is the result of individual decisions to implement conscious intentions. For Americans, more than most people, history has been that.... This sense of openness, of possibility and autonomy, has been a national asset as precious as the topsoil of the Middle West. But like topsoil, it is subject to erosion; it requires tending. And it is not bad for Americans to come to terms with the fact that for them too, history is a story of inertia and the unforeseen.”

PeopleBelieveHas BeensFactsStoriesIndividualTermDecisionResultsHistoryMiddleSubjectsPossibilityConsciousIntentionWestAssetsOpennessAutonomyInertiaErosionUnforeseenTopsoil
Author:George Will
Create image

“While the scientist, on the one hand, is concerned with giving a faithful description of facts, on the other, he has the equally important task of construing them in relation to some explanatory conjecture. Similarly the historian has a double duty: both of reporting the past as nearly as possible as it passed or was lived through by men at the time (without doctoring up events to fit later developments or some more "enlightened reading" of them); and second, of interpreting their import in the light of a present hypothesis.”

MenGivingImportantFactsHandsLightPastScienceReadingHistoryEventsDutyDevelopmentFitConcernedTasksScientistRelationFaithfulDescriptionEnlightenedHistorianHypothesisImportsInterpretingConjectureDoctoring
Book:The judgment of history
Create image

“Hardly a pure science, history is closer to animal husbandry than it is to mathematics in that it involves selective breeding. The principal difference between the husbandryman and the historian is that the former breeds sheep or cows or such and the latter breeds (assumed) facts. The husbandryman uses his skills to enrich the future, the historian uses his to enrich the past. Both are usually up to their ankles in bullshit.”

FactsUsePastScienceDifferencesAnimalHistoryPureSkillsAccountsMathematicsFormerLatterHistorianCowsSheepPrincipalBullshitBreedingSelectiveAnklesSelective Breeding
Book:Another Roadside Attraction
Create image

“The revealed and mystic literature of mankind bears ample testimony to the fact that religious experience has been too enduring and dominant in the history of mankind to be rejected as mere illusion. There seems to be no reason, then, to accept the normal level of human experience as fact and reject its other levels as mystical and emotional.”

HumansHas BeensReasonFactsSeemsLiteratureReligiousLevelsAcceptingHistoryMankindAcceptanceEmotionalBearsPoliticianNormalIllusionExperienceMereEndurePhilosopherRejectionNo ReasonRejectsLife ExperienceScholarRejectedDominantMysticalTestimonyHuman ExperienceRevealingMysticReligious Experience
Book:The religious thought in Islam
Create image

“Every work of history constructs contexts and designs, forms in which past reality can be comprehended. History creates comprehensibility primarily by arranging facts meaningfully and only in a very limited sense by establishing strict causal connections.”

InspirationalFactsRealityMotivationalPastFormHistoryDesignConnectionsStrictConstructsArranging
Book:Men and Ideas: History, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance
Create image

“I am not blind to the shortcomings of our own people. I am not unaware that leaders betray, and sell out, and play false. But this knowledge does not outweigh the fact that my class, the working class, is exploited, driven, fought back with the weapon of starvation, with guns and with venal courts whenever they strike for conditions more human, more civilized for their children, and for their children's children.”

PeopleHumansChildrenDoePlayFactsLeaderClassKnowledgeHistoryConditionsWeaponsGunBlindSellsCourtStrikesDrivenCivilizedBetrayWorking ClassStarvationShortcomings
Author:Mother Jones
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

“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

“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

“Today social justice represents one of the most serious challenges to the conscience of the world. The abyss between those who are within the world 'order' and those who are excluded is widening day by day. The use of leading-edge technologies has made it possible to accumulate wealth in a way that is fantastic but perverse because it is unjustly distributed. Twenty-percent of humankind control eighty percent of all means of life. That fact creates a dangerous imbalance in the movement of history.”

WorldWayMeanMadeFactsUseTodayOrderSocialChallengesWealthJusticeHistoryTechnologyDangerousMovementSeriousPercentConscienceTwentiesSocial JusticeEdgesInequalityMade ItFantasticHumankindUnjustAbyssTheologianDistributionEightyWorld OrderExcludedImbalancePerverseness
Book:The Prayer of Saint Francis: A Message of Peace for the World Today
Create image

“When every fact, every present or past phenomenon of that universe, every phase of present or past life therein, has been examined, classified, and co-ordinated with the rest, then the mission of science will be completed. What is this but saying that the task of science can never end till man ceases to be, till history is no longer made, and development itself ceases?”

MenHas BeensMadeEndsFactsPastScienceUniverseHistoryDevelopmentTasksAccountsMissionsCeasePhenomenonPhasesExaminationPast LifeClassification
Book:The Grammar of Science
Create image

“As Karl Marx once noted: 'Hegel remarks somewhere that all great, world-historical facts and personages occur, as it were, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.' William Jennings Bryan and the Scopes trial was a tragedy. The creationists and intelligent design theorists are a farce.”

WorldFirstsFactsScienceHistoryDesignFirst TimeTragedyIntelligentAddHistoricalTrialsScopeRemarksTheoristsFarceIntelligent DesignHegelBryanHistorical FactsScopes Trial
Author:Michael Shermer
Create image