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Quotes about history

176 quotes from 130 people

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There’s a good reason why nobody studies history. It just teaches you too much.
Noam Chomskyborn 1928KGNU benefit at the University of Colorado at Boulder, April 5, 2003 (context: João Goulart)
You can lie or distort the story of the French Revolution as long as you like, and nothing will happen. Propose a false theory in chemistry, and it’ll be refuted tomorrow.
Noam Chomskyborn 1928Noam Chomsky: A Life of Dissent, 1992
- Science
- Truth & Lies
For my part, I consider that it will be found much better by all Parties to leave the past to history, especially as I propose to write that history myself.
Winston Churchill1874–1965Speech in the House of Commons (January 23, 1948), cited in The Yale Book of Quotations (2006), Fred R. Shapiro, Yale University Press, p. 154
- Comedy
Lenin was sent into Russia by the Germans in the same way that you might send a phial containing a culture of typhoid or cholera to be poured into the water supply of a great city, and it worked with amazing accuracy.
Winston Churchill1874–1965On Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, in the House of Commons, November 5, 1919; as cited in Churchill by Himself (2008), ed. Langworth, PublicAffairs, p. 355
- Clever Jabs
The longer you can look back, the farther you can look forward.
Winston Churchill1874–1965Speech to the Royal College of Physicians, London (2 March 1944)
Fascism was the shadow or ugly child of communism… As Fascism sprang from Communism, so Nazism developed from Fascism.
Winston Churchill1874–1965The Second World War, Volume 1, The Gathering Storm, Mariner Books (1985), pp. 13-14. First published in 1948.
- Politics
Not to know what happened before you were born is to be a child forever. For what is the time of a man, except it be interwoven with that memory of ancient things of a previous age?
Cicero107–43 BCOrator Ad M. Brutum (46 BC), Chapter XXXIV, section 120
History is truly the witness of times past, the light of truth, the life of memory, the teacher of life, the messenger of antiquity; whose voice, but the orator’s, can entrust her to immortality?
Cicero107–43 BCDe Oratore – On the Orator (55 BC), Book II, Chapter 9, section 36
Isn’t history ultimately the result of our fear of boredom?
ECEmil Cioran1911–1995History and Utopia (1960)
“And this also,” said Marlow suddenly, “has been one of the dark places of the earth.”
Joseph Conrad1857–1924Heart of Darkness (1899), Part IIn context
Going up that river was like traveling back to the earliest beginnings of the world, when vegetation rioted on the earth and the big trees were kings.
Joseph Conrad1857–1924Heart of Darkness (1899), Part IIIn context
- Nature
History, like love, is so apt to surround her heroes with an atmosphere of imaginary brightness
James Fenimore Cooper1789–1851The Last of the Mohicans (1826), Chapter XVIIIIn context
- Love
Professor Johnston often said that if you didn’t know history, you didn’t know anything. You were a leaf that didn’t know it was part of a tree.
Michael Crichton1942–2008Timeline (1999), Chapter 2, “Dordogne” (p. 85)
The people who have really made history are the martyrs.
Aleister Crowley1875–1947The Confessions of Aleister Crowley (1929), Ch. 4
When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority are wrong.
Eugene V. Debs1855–1926Speech in Cleveland, Ohio.(Sept. 11, 1918) Eugene V. Debs Speaks, ed. Jean Y. Tussey (1970)
- Change