Quotes and Sayings about History

Historians from England will say I am a liar, but history is written by those who have hanged heroes.

Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

If citizens followed their leaders' example throughout history, the human race would have died out centuries ago.

It's not always the most powerful who write history. It's the ones who survive.

History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.

Revolutions are the locomotives of history.

People of the world - look at Berlin, where a wall came down, a continent came together, and history proved that there is no challenge too great for a world that stands as one.

This is for the record. History is written by the victor. History is filled with liars. If he lives and we die, his truth becomes written - and ours is lost.

If we don't mind our own histories, it will do the same to us.

A historian is a hunter, my lord. Seeking out signs in the undergrowth of correspondence and memoir, tracking prey via the spoor of memory.

The funny thing about history is that we imagine that people didn't laugh in the old days, but of course they did, at stupid things.

History is a living thing. Paper is dead.

You don't hate history, you hate the way it was taught to you in high school.

History repeats itself, and that's one of the things that's wrong with history.

Sometimes history repeats itself. And sometimes it doesn't.

I loved history because to me, history was like watching a movie.

Presidents who obsess over history obsess about their place in it, instead of forging it.

A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots.

Culture is the widening of the mind and of the spirit.

Without memory, there is no culture. Without memory, there would be no civilization, no society, no future.

One of the things that draws us to the 19th century is that it's far enough away to feel exotic but close enough to be approachable. We can still recognize ourselves in those people, even as we see all the ways in which our lives have diverged from theirs.

In the nineteenth century the problem was that God is dead. In the twentieth century the problem is that man is dead.

Death and vulgarity are the only two facts in the nineteenth century that one cannot explain away.

This room is like a museum of old, useless crap... by which I mean every museum.

If you gave back every stolen artifact from a museum, you'd be left with an empty building.

What would I put in a museum? Probably a museum. That's an amusing relic of our past.

Have you any idea how much tyrants fear the people they oppress? All of them realize that, one day, amongst their many victims, there is sure to be one who rises against them and strikes back!

Until they became conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious.

Workers of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your chains.

Social progress can be measured by the social position of the females.

Every man dies, not every man really lives.

Only the dead have seen the end of war.

He loved libraries. Nowhere else in the world felt so safe and homey. Nowhere else smelled like books and dust and happy solitude quite like a library did.

The worst pain in the world goes beyond the physical. Even further beyond any other emotional pain one can feel. It is the betrayal of a friend.

Everyone has a choice. And every choice has a consequence.

For the world has changed, and we must change with it.

I never thought I'd see in my life a black candidate running for President.

My aim remains, if history approves, to unite our country.

Berlin will live and the Wall will fall!

Once you pull the pin, Mr. grenade isn't your friend anymore.

Anyone whose tongue dares to question the birth of Princess Rhaenyra's sons should have it removed.

There is no war so hateful to the gods as a war between kin, and no war so bloody as a war between dragons.

"Mercy is the sweetest wine and the bitterest wormwood," Eliss, the mother, said. "For it rewards the merciful and shames the guilty."

Is a lie really a lie if it is honestly believed?

What really alarms me about President Bush's "War on Terrorism" is the grammar. How do you wage war on an abstract noun? How is "Terrorism" going to surrender? It's well known, in philological circles, that it's very hard for abstract nouns to surrender.

It is not dying that frightens us. It's living without ever having done our best.

For evil bastards to win power, all ordinary people have to do is stand aside and keep quiet.

It would not be possible to praise nurses too highly.

The best that we can do is to be kindly and helpful toward our friends and fellow passengers who are clinging to the same speck of dirt while we are drifting side by side to our common doom.