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Quotes about history

176 quotes from 130 people

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Great edifices, like great mountains, are the work of centuries.
Victor Hugo1802–1885The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (1831), Book Third, Chapter IIn context
- Art
- Time
The invention of printing is the greatest event in history. It is the mother of revolution.
Victor Hugo1802–1885The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (1831), Book Fifth, Chapter IIIn context
- Technology
So the pendulum swings, now violently, now slowly; and every institution not only carries within it the seeds of its own dissolution, but prepares the way for its most hated rival.
William Ralph Inge1860–1954“Democracy and the Future” The Atlantic Monthly (March 1922)
- Change
It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.
Henry James1843–1916Hawthorne (1879), Ch. I: The Early Years.
- Writing
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
History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.
James Joyce1882–1941Ulysses (1922), Ch. 2: NestorIn context
But it’s no use, says he. Force, hatred, history, all that. That’s not life for men and women, insult and hatred. And everybody knows that it’s the very opposite of that that is really life.
—What? says Alf.
—Love, says Bloom. I mean the opposite of hatred.
James Joyce1882–1941Ulysses (1922), Part II, Episode 12 (3 of 3)In context
- Love
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)
Naturally, every age thinks that all ages before it were prejudiced, and today we think this more than ever and are just as wrong as all previous ages that thought so.
Carl Jung1875–1961Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle (1960), p. 33
- Thinking
The history of mankind is the instant between two strides taken by a traveler.
Franz Kafka1883–1924The Blue Octavo Notebooks (1954)
- Time
We celebrate the past to awaken the future.
John F. Kennedy1917–1963“Remarks at the 25th Anniversary of the Signing of the Social Security Act,” Hyde Park, New York (14 August 1960)
I am certain that after the dust of centuries has passed over our cities, we, too, will be remembered not for victories or defeats in battle or in politics, but for our contribution to the human spirit.
John F. Kennedy1917–1963“Remarks at a Closed-circuit Television Broadcast on Behalf of the National Cultural Center (527)” (29 November 1962)
Few will have the greatness to bend history itself; but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation.
Robert F. Kennedy1925–1968Day of Affirmation Address, University of Cape Town (6 June 1966)
- Change
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
A study of the history of opinion is a necessary preliminary to the emancipation of the mind.
John Maynard Keynes1883–1946The End of Laissez-faire (1926), Ch. 1
- Ideas