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Quotes about history

176 quotes from 130 people

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The last half of the 20th century will seem like a wild party for rich kids, compared to what’s coming now.
Hunter S. Thompson1937–2005“When War Drums Roll” (17 September 2001)
If we don’t care about our past we can’t have very much hope for our future.
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis1929–1994Press conference held at the Grand Central Terminal’s famous Oyster Bar in 1975 in New York City
- Hope
Nations without a past are contradictions in terms.
Eric Hobsbawm1917–2012“Ethnicity and Nationalism in Europe Today” (February 1992). Anthropology Today.
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
The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton1815–1902Declaration of Sentiments, Seneca Falls Convention (July 19-20, 1848).
- Women
No personal significance or insignificance can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation.
Abraham Lincoln1809–1865Lincoln’s Second Annual Message to Congress (1862)
- Honor
There are people in every time and every land who want to stop history in its tracks. They fear the future, mistrust the present, and invoke the security of a comfortable past which, in fact, never existed.
Robert F. Kennedy1925–1968The Opening to the Future Adress at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California (June 8, 1964)
- Change
The history of human thought recalls the swinging of a pendulum which takes centuries to swing. After a long period of slumber comes a moment of awakening.
Peter Kropotkin1842–1921Anarchist Morality (1890)
- Thinking
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
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)
The explorers of the past were great men and we should honour them. But let us not forget that their spirit lives on.
Edmund Hillary1919–2008Sir Edmund Hillary: King Of The World
Assassination has never changed the history of the world.
Benjamin Disraeli1804–1881Addressing the House of Commons after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln (1 May 1865)
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)
Wars throughout history have been waged for conquest and plunder.
Eugene V. Debs1855–1926The Canton, Ohio Speech, Anti-War Speech (1918)
- War & Peace
Thy Naiad airs have brought me home
To the glory that was Greece
And the grandeur that was Rome.
Edgar Allan Poe1809–1849To Helen, st. 2 (1831; these lines as revised in 1843)In context
- Beauty