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Quotes about history

176 quotes from 130 people

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I am convinced that everything has come down to us from the banks of the Ganges, — astronomy, astrology, metempsychosis, etc.
Voltaire1694–1778Lettres sur l’origine des sciences et sur celle des peuples de l’Asie adressés à M. de Voltaire par M. Bailly et précédées de quelques lettres de M. de Voltaire a l’auteur (Paris, 1777), quoted in E. F. Bryant, The Quest for the Origins of Vedic …
Indeed, history is nothing more than a tableau of crimes and misfortunes.
Voltaire1694–1778L’Ingénu, ch.10 (1767)
This body which called itself and which still calls itself the Holy Roman Empire was in no way holy, nor Roman, nor an empire.
Voltaire1694–1778Essai sur l’histoire générale et sur les mœurs et l’esprit des nations, Chapter 70 (1756)
Anything but history, for history must be false.
Robert Walpole1676–1745Remark to his son, who offered to read history to him; in Walpoliana (1799), vol. 1, p. 60
- Truth & Lies
Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe… Yet, clumsily or smoothly, the world, it seems, progresses and will progress.
H. G. Wells1866–1946The Outline of History (1920), Ch. 41
- Education
Ashoka (264 to 227 B.C.), one of the great monarchs of history, whose dominions extended from Afghanistan to Madras… is the only military monarch on record who abandoned warfare after victory.
H. G. Wells1866–1946The Outline of History (1920), chapter no. 25.4 (Buddhism and Ashoka) page no 365-366
- War & Peace
One age misunderstands another; and a petty age misunderstands all the others in its own ugly way.
Ludwig Wittgenstein1889–1951Culture and Value (1980), p. 98e
Men are we, and must grieve when even the Shade
Of that which once was great, is passed away.
William Wordsworth1770–1850On the Extinction of the Venetian Republic, l. 13 (wr. 1802; pub. 1807)
For old, unhappy, far-off things,
And battles long ago.
William Wordsworth1770–1850The Solitary Reaper (1807), st. 3In context
For me it is a moment of anguish because all my life … you see, the whole of my adult life … I have believed in merger and the unity of these two territories.
Lee Kuan Yew1923–2015Press conference on Singapore’s separation from Malaysia (9 August 1965)
I am supposing, or perhaps only hoping, that our future may be found in the past’s fugitive moments of compassion rather than in its solid centuries of warfare.
Howard Zinn1922–2010A People’s History of the United States (1980; 2003), Ch. 1
- Hope