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Quotes about history

176 quotes from 130 people

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Among the sentiments of most powerful operation upon the human heart, and most highly honorable to the human character, are those of veneration for our forefathers, and of love for our posterity.
John Quincy Adams1767–1848Oration at Plymouth (1802)
- Family
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)
It was the advent of the second plane, sharking in low over the Statue of Liberty: that was the defining moment.
Martin Amis1949–2023“Fear and loathing” (2001)
Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.
Aristotle384–322 BCPoetics, 1451b.6
- Poetry
Man is a history-making creature who can neither repeat his past nor leave it behind.
W. H. Auden1907–1973The Dyer’s Hand, and Other Essays (1962), “D. H. Lawrence”
I read it a little as a duty, but it tells me nothing that does not either vex or weary me. The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars or pestilences, in every page; the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all⁠—it is very tiresome
Jane Austen1775–1817Northanger Abbey (1817), Chapter 14In context
- Women
If 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 Dolgoff
- Power
People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.
James Baldwin1924–1987“Stranger in the Village”
The true picture of the past flits by. The past can be seized only as an image which flashes up at the instant when it can be recognized and is never seen again.
Walter Benjamin1892–1940Theses on the Philosophy of History (1940), V
- Time
There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism.
Walter Benjamin1892–1940Theses on the Philosophy of History (1940), VII
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
Nothing that has ever happened should be regarded as lost for history.
Walter Benjamin1892–1940Theses on the Philosophy of History (1940), III
There is a secret agreement between past generations and the present one.
Walter Benjamin1892–1940Theses on the Philosophy of History (1940), II
The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the “state of emergency” in which we live is not the exception but the rule.
Walter Benjamin1892–1940Theses on the Philosophy of History (1940), VIII
- Politics
The theories, the dogmas and the scripts stand outside the gates of history. The dominant factor is the aspiration of the people and the ability to seek total identification with it.
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto1928–1979Letter to his daughter (1978), p. 15
- Politics