Quotes about history
176 quotes from 130 people
Jawaharlal Nehru1889–1964“A Tryst with Destiny” speech, Constituent Assembly, New Delhi (14 August 1947)
Dag Hammarskjöld1905–1961Vägmärken · Markings (1963), 26 December 1956
Rod Serling1924–1975The Twilight Zone, “Death’s-Head Revisited” (1961).
Antonio Gramsci1891–1937“Italy and Spain”, L’Ordine Nuovo (11 March 1921)- Antonio Gramsci1891–1937Selections from the Prison Notebooks (1971)
Robert Walpole1676–1745Remark to his son, who offered to read history to him; in Walpoliana (1799), vol. 1, p. 60
Niall Fergusonborn 1964Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World (2003), Chapter 2, “White Plague” (p. 103)The history of every country begins in the heart of a man or a woman.
Willa Cather1873–1947O Pioneers! (1913), Part I, Ch. 5Nothing that has ever happened should be regarded as lost for history.
Walter Benjamin1892–1940Theses on the Philosophy of History (1940), IIIThere is nothing in Greek civilization that does not illuminate our own.
Will Durant1885–1981The Life of Greece (1939), PrefaceThere is a secret agreement between past generations and the present one.
Walter Benjamin1892–1940Theses on the Philosophy of History (1940), IIIf there is a devil in human history, that devil is the principle of command.
Mikhail Bakunin1814–1876“On the Program of the Alliance” (1871), in Bakunin on Anarchy (1971), translated and edited by Sam DolgoffThe great problem of any civilization is how to rejuvenate itself without rebarbarization.
Will Durant1885–1981Philosophy and the Social Problem (1917)
Martin Amis1949–2023“Fear and loathing” (2001)
