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Quotes about history

176 quotes from 130 people

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Armed with the knowledge of our past, we can with confidence charter a course for our future. Culture is an indispensable weapon in the freedom struggle. We must take hold of it and forge the future with the past.
Malcolm X1925–1965Speech at Founding Rally of the Organization of Afro-American Unity (28 June 1964), as quoted in By Any Means Necessary (1970)
- Freedom
When the history of our times is written, will we be remembered as the generation that turned our backs in a moment of global crisis or will it be recorded that we did the right thing?
Nelson Mandela1918–2013Nelson Mandela on Aids, 46664 Concert, Tromso, Norway (11 Jun 2005)
- Responsibility
I suppose I am still a believer in the now unfashionable “heroic” school, which says that history is shaped by individual men and women and the choices that they make, by deeds glorious and terrible.
George R. R. Martinborn 1948infinity plus interview (2001)
Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.
Karl Marx1818–1883The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852)
The history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggles.
Karl Marx1818–1883The Communist Manifesto (1848)In context
- Politics
History is sympathetic to its authors.
John McAfee1945–2021Into the Heart of Truth (2001)
An age is called Dark not because the light fails to shine, but because people refuse to see it.
James A. Michener1907–1997Space (1982)
- Knowledge
An era can be said to end when its basic illusions are exhausted.
Arthur Miller1915–2005“The Year it Came Apart”, New York magazine, Vol. 8, No. 1 (December 30, 1974 – January 6, 1975), p. 30
A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance.
Jawaharlal Nehru1889–1964“A Tryst with Destiny” speech, Constituent Assembly, New Delhi (14 August 1947)
- Freedom
At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom.
Jawaharlal Nehru1889–1964“A Tryst with Destiny”, speech to the Constituent Assembly, New Delhi (14 August 1947)
- Freedom
For history tells us that while these truths may be self-evident, they have never been self-executing; that while freedom is a gift from God, it must be secured by His people here on Earth.
Barack Obamaborn 1961Barack Obama’s Second Inaugural Address (2013)
- Freedom
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
The book of Genesis is a male declaration of independence from the ancient mother-cults. Its challenge to nature, so sexist to modern ears, marks one of the crucial moments in western history.
Camille Pagliaborn 1947Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990), p. 40
- Religion
There have been, and will be again, many destructions of mankind arising out of many causes; the greatest have been brought about by the agencies of fire and water, and other lesser ones by innumerable other causes.
Plato429–349 BCTimaeus, 22c (tr. Benjamin Jowett)
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