History Quotations (1 Viewer)

[Caratacus]

Here are some of my favourites - add more!

That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons history has to teach. - Aldous Huxley

All history is contemporary history. - Benedetto Croce

Those who have no knowledge of what has gone before them must forever remain children. - Cicero

Such a lot of things seem to me such rot. History, for example. Why it's quite different out of different books. - Agatha Christie

History is philosophy teaching by examples. - Thucydides

A history in which every particular incident may be true may on the whole be false. - Thomas Babington Macaulay

Historian: an unsuccessful novelist. - H.L. Mencken

More history's made by secret handshakes than by battles, bills, and proclamations. J- ohn Barth, The Sot-Weed Factor

Perhaps nobody has changed the course of history as much as the historians. - Franklin P. Jones

The past actually happened but history is only what someone wrote down. - A. Whitney Brown, The Big Picture

History is a pack of lies about events that never happened told by people who weren't there. - George Santayana

The historian has before him a jigsaw puzzle from which many pieces have disappeared. These gaps can be filled only by his imagination. - Gaetano Salvemini

The historian must serve two masters, the past and the present. - Fritz Stern

Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history. - Plato

History is the science of what never happens twice. - Paul Valery (a poet!)

 

[Tenille]

History is the un-ending search for truth - GR Elton

 

[hatty]

"history. the past. the forever." - Hatty

 

[Caratacus]

I am well aware that I have not written anything but fictions… which is not to say they have nothing to do with the truth. - Michel Foucault

There is no history, only fictions of varying degrees of plausibility. - Voltaire

There is no history, only histories. - Karl Popper

 

[Sarah168]

"You're living in the past Marge! Quit living in the past!" - Homer Simpson


oh....we wanted serious quotes...oh well lol

 

[SimpaticO]

"How can you have a future if your past is in your present?"

- Sarah Jessica Parker (aka Carrie Bradshaw) in Sex and the City

 

[Caratacus]

Lolol!! It's a bit like this one:

The past is never dead. It's not even past.

William Faulkner

 

[Caratacus]

And some more I found:

All history is contemporary history.

Benedetto Croce (1941)

History is a myth we all agree to believe.
-Napoleon


"The past is a place of fantasy."
- Hayden White

 

[silvermoon]

Fischer: "History is just one damned thing after another"

 

[SimpaticO]

Well I can't remember which historian wrote this but I read it when I was studying Greek History which he described as the following. If you think about it, it can be related to all history:

"A continuous stream of warfare intercepted by brief interludes of peace"

 

[Caratacus]

The essential matter of history is not what happened but what people thought or said about it. - F.W. Maitland

History is the transformation of tumultuous conquerors into silent footnotes. -Paul Eldridge

Imagination plays too important a role in the writing of history, and what is imagination but the projection of the author's personality. - Pieter Geyl

 

[Tenille]

"History is a vast early warning system."
Norman Cousins

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

 

[max]

'We don't see things as they are. We see them as WE are.' -anonymous

 

[Caratacus]

LOLOLOL

"Do not adjust your mind. The fault is in reality."

 

[SimpaticO]

"All history is a history of class struggles" - Carl Marx (we can't forget that one, I thought it had already been mentioned)

 

[Caratacus]

There is no history, only fictions of varying degrees of plausibility.
- Voltaire

History is not a catalogue but…a convincing version of events.
- A.J.P. Taylor

 

[silvermoon]

i so had a quote 2 put here 2 top caratacus' poetic effort...i did, really! but now my slow SLOW computer has finally connected me, its gone! *cries* ah well, just goes 2 prove that i have the memory span of a goldfish with alzheimers.

 

[Plebeian]

"History is a pack of lies we play on the dead" - Voltaire

Our teacher gave us a sheet of history quotes, maybe I can dig it out from somewhere.

 

[Caratacus]

To enable man to understand the society of the past and to increase his mastery over the society of the present is the dual function of history.

Edward H. Carr



History thrives on generalizations.

Edward H. Carr



The study of history is the study of causes.

Edward H. Carr

 

[SimpaticO]

I set myself a challenge and went through some books at school during a study period and I found these, hope you guys like them!

"History is the witness that testifies to the passing of time; it illuminates reality; vitalizes memory, provides guidance in daily life and brings us tidings of antiquity" - Cicero

"History is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind" - Edward Gibbon

"Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history" - George Bernard Shaw

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" - George Santayana

"History is powerful stuff. One day your life is fine. The next day it's locked for a metaphsyical loop. Was Napoleon really at Waterloo? Would that change what I had for breakfast?" - Henry Bromel

"History is more or less bunk. It's tradition. We don't want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker's damn is the history we made today" - Henry Ford

"For four - fifths of our history our planet was dominated by pond scum" - J.W. Schopf

"History never looks like history when you are living through it" - John W. Gardner

"History is the short trudge from Adam to atom" - Leonard Louis Levinson

"History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon" - Napoleon Bonoparte

"Some people make headlines while others make history" - Philip Elmer - DeWitt

"History will be kind to me for I intend to write it" - Sir Winston Churchill

"Indeed, history is nothing more than a tableau of crimes and misfortunes" - Voltaire