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Quotes about history

176 quotes from 130 people

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The past is never dead. It’s not even past.
William Faulkner1897–1962Requiem for a Nun (1951)
- Time
Australia was the eighteenth-century equivalent of Mars.
Niall Fergusonborn 1964Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World (2003), Chapter 2, “White Plague” (p. 103)
The British Empire was the nearest thing there has ever been to a world government. Yet its mode of operation was a triumph of minimalism.
Niall Fergusonborn 1964Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World (2003), Introduction, p. xxvii
- Government
The whole point about historians is that we are really communing with the dead. It’s very restful – because you read. There’s some sociopathic problem that makes me prefer it to human interaction.
Niall Fergusonborn 1964“The NS Interview: Niall Ferguson”, New Statesman (July 23, 2010).
History is more or less bunk.
Henry Ford1863–1947
The greatest changes in social life are wrought imperceptibly, and are only seen from afar.
Anatole France1844–1924The White Stone (1905), Ch. III, p. 135
- Change
A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history.
Mahatma Gandhi1869–1948Harijan (19 November 1938) p. 343
- Motivation & Goals
The world’s history is a divine poem, of which the history of every nation is a canto, and every man a word.
James A. Garfield1831–1881The Province of History (c. 1856), Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 620
- Poetry
The various modes of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people, as equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and by the magistrate, as equally useful.
Edward Gibbon1737–1794The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. 1 (1776), Ch. 2
- Religion
In fact, our standard account of monetary history is precisely backwards. We did not begin with barter, discover money, and then eventually develop credit systems. It happened precisely the other way around.
David Graeber1961–2020Debt: The First 5,000 Years (2011), Chapter Two, “The Myth of Barter”, p. 40
- Money
“People come⁠—they stay for a while, they flourish, they build⁠—and they go. It is their way. But we remain. There were badgers here, I’ve been told, long before that same city ever came to be. And now there are badgers here again. We are an enduring lot, and we may move out for a time, but we wait, and are patient, and back we come. And so it will ever be.”
Kenneth Grahame1859–1932The Wind in the Willows (1908), Chapter IVIn context
- Animals
- Time
History teaches, but it has no pupils.
Antonio Gramsci1891–1937“Italy and Spain”, L’Ordine Nuovo (11 March 1921)
History is at once freedom and necessity.
Antonio Gramsci1891–1937Selections from the Prison Notebooks (1971)
The Southern rebellion was largely the outgrowth of the Mexican war. Nations, like individuals, are punished for their transgressions. We got our punishment in the most sanguinary and expensive war of modern times.
Ulysses S. Grant1822–1885Personal Memoirs of General U. S. Grant (1885), Ch. 3
- War & Peace
Truth-loving Persians do not dwell upon
The trivial skirmish fought near Marathon.
Robert Graves1895–1985“The Persian Version,” lines 1–2, from Poems 1938-1945: Satires and Grotesques (1946)
- Truth & Lies