Famously Said Random quote

Quotes about history

176 quotes from 130 people

Most readBy personPage 10 of 12

There is no history of mankind, there is only an indefinite number of histories of all kinds of aspects of human life.
Karl Popper1902–1994The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945), Vol. 2, Ch. 25 “Has History any Meaning?”
Anyone who doesn’t regret the passing of the Soviet Union has no heart, Anyone who wants it restored has no brains.
Vladimir Putinborn 1952Putin Retains Soviet Discipline While Steering Toward Reform (20 February 2000)
- Politics
History, the proverb says, is made at night. The European civil servant normally sleeps at night. What waits in his IN basket to confront him at nine in the morning is history.
Thomas Pynchonborn 1937V. (1963), Chapter 9, Part I (Mondaugen)
I believe that communism is another sad, bizarre chapter in human history whose last pages even now are being written.
Ronald Reagan1911–2004The Evil Empire (1983)
- Politics
Our revolution has made me feel the full force of the axiom that history is fiction and I am convinced that chance and intrigue have produced more heroes than genius and virtue.
Maximilien Robespierre1758–1794Lettres à ses commettants, 1ère série, n°10, (21 December 1792)
There is a mysterious cycle in human events. To some generations much is given. Of other generations much is expected. This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny.
Franklin D. Roosevelt1882–1945Speech accepting renomination, Democratic National Convention, Philadelphia (27 June 1936)
- America
- Responsibility
Nationalism of one kind or another was the cause of most of the genocide of the twentieth century.
Arundhati Royborn 1961Come September (29 Sep 2002)
- Patriotism
I found one day in school a boy of medium size ill-treating a smaller boy. I expostulated, but he replied: “The bigs hit me, so I hit the babies; that’s fair.” In these words he epitomized the history of the human race.
Bertrand Russell1872–1970Education and the Social Order (1932), p. 31
- Power
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.
Bertrand Russell1872–1970On History (1904)
- Facts
Human history can be viewed as a slowly dawning awareness that we are members of a larger group.
Carl Sagan1934–1996Cosmos (1980), p. 339
The people of Crete unfortunately make more history than they can consume locally.
Saki1870–1916The Chronicles of Clovis (1911)
- Comedy
Stated most straightforwardly, most of earth’s humans have inherited their beliefs about the nature of birth and death and everything in between and thereafter from preliterate Middle Eastern pastoralists.
Robert Sapolskyborn 1957Behave (2017), ch. 9, “Centuries to Millennia Before”, p. 313
- Religion
Every age has its own poetry; in every age the circumstances of history choose a nation, a race, a class to take up the torch by creating situations that can be expressed or transcended only through poetry.
Jean-Paul Sartre1905–1980“Orphée Noir (Black Orpheus)”
- Poetry
All the Dachaus must remain standing.
Rod Serling1924–1975The Twilight Zone, “Death’s-Head Revisited” (1961).
How many ages hence
Shall this our lofty scene be acted over
In States unborn, and accents yet unknown!
William Shakespeare1564–1616Julius Caesar (1599), Act III, Scene I, spoken by CassiusIn context
- Acting