Home / Topics / History Quotes

History Quotes

Browse 6202 quotes about History.

History Quotes

“It's rare that we actively and consciously 'forget'; most of the time we have simply forgotten, with no consciousness of having forgotten. In individuals, the phenomenon is called 'denial'; in entire cultures and nations, it's usually called 'history.”

Culture Individual Nations Forget Consciousness History Forgotten Denial Phenomenon

Author:Joyce Carol Oates

“History, the winnowing wind, never halts. We see the chaff rise, forget the waiting grain, seed of the future, fallen to the threshing floor. We never learn, but live on, slit-narrow, as if our living were a pencil line traced upon paper, behaving as trapped denizens of a flat world hemmed in by the bigoted horizon of our own making. Yet the meaning of living is a pushing back, a pulling down of the great walls and domes of fear and ignorance, is relinquishing the nest for the sky, ignorance for understanding. The look back is also a look forward.”

“The forgetting of the history of marginalized groups is both a cause and effect of their marginalization.”

Causes Forget History Groups Effects Cause And Effect Marginalized Marginalization

Author:Susan Jacoby

“The Germans, in the age of Tacitus, were unacquainted with the use of letters; and the use of letters is the principal circumstance that distinguishes a civilised people from a herd of savages incapable of knowledge or reflection. Without that artificial help, the human memory soon dissipates or corrupts the ideas intrusted to her charge; and the nobler faculties of the mind, no longer supplied with models or with materials, gradually forget their powers; the judgment becomes feeble and lethargic, the imagination languid or irregular.”

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

“Such, indeed, is the policy of civil war: severely to remember injuries, and to forget the most important services. Revenge is profitable, gratitude is expensive.”

Important War Remember Forget History Policy Gratitude Revenge Civil War Expensive Injury Profitable Roman Empire

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

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

“Let us never forget this: since the day of the air, the old frontiers are gone. When you think of the defense of England you no longer think of the chalk cliffs of Dover; you think of the Rhine. That is where our frontier lies.”

Thinking Lying Forget History Gone Air England Defense Deceit Never Forget Frontiers Cliffs Chalk Dover

Author:Stanley Baldwin

“The past always seems somehow more golden, more serious, than the present. We tend to forget the partisanship of yesteryear, preferring to re-imagine our history as a sure and steady march toward greatness.”

Seems Past Forget History Imagine Greatness Serious Golden March Steady Partisanship Yesteryear

Author:Jon Meacham

“The history of all times, and of today especially, teaches that...women will be forgotten if they forget to think about themselves.”

“The poet may be used as a barometer, but let us not forget that he is also part of the weather.”

May Art Philosophy Used Poetry Forget History Poet Weather Forget The Past Barometer

Author:Lionel Trilling