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Quotes about history

176 quotes from 130 people

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To articulate the past historically does not mean to recognize it ‘the way it really was’ (Ranke). It means to seize hold of a memory as it flashes up at a moment of danger.
Walter Benjamin1892–1940Theses on the Philosophy of History (1940), VI
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
Caesar and Christ had met in the arena, and Christ had won.
Will Durant1885–1981III—Caesar and Christ (1944), Chapter 30, part 1, p. 652
- Christianity
We have a place, all of us, in a long story. A story we continue, but whose end we will not see.
George W. Bushborn 1946George W. Bush’s First Inaugural Address (2001)
Like many other crucially important technologies, hay emerged anonymously during the so-called Dark Ages.
Freeman Dyson1923–2020Infinite in All Directions (1988), Ch. 8: Quick Is Beautiful, p. 135.
- Technology
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
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?”
At times history and fate meet at a single time in a single place to shape a turning point in man’s unending search for freedom.
Lyndon B. Johnson1908–1973We Shall Overcome (1965)
- Freedom
No one can flatter himself that he is immune to the spirit of his own epoch, or even that he possesses a full understanding of it.
Carl Jung1875–1961Paracelsus the Physician (1942)
For those thousands in the south tower, the second plane meant the end of everything. For us, its glint was the worldflash of a coming future.
Martin Amis1949–2023“Fear and loathing” (2001)
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
Those who deny Auschwitz would be ready to remake it.
Primo Levi1919–1987Interview with Daniel Toaff, Sorgenti di Vita (25 March 1983); translated by Mirto Stone
Condemn me, it does not matter: history will absolve me.
Fidel Castro1926–2016Closing words of his defense at the Moncada trial (16 October 1953), published as History Will Absolve Me
We can pay our debts to the past by putting the future in debt to ourselves.
John Buchan1875–1940Address to the people of Canada on the coronation of George VI (12 May 1937)
To picture world history as advancing smoothly and steadily without sometimes taking gigantic strides backward is undialectical, unscientific and theoretically wrong.
Vladimir Lenin1870–1924Collected Works, Vol. 22, pp. 305–319.