Top 100 History Quotes of All Time

A short, finished list rather than an endless feed: 100 of the best history quotes ever written, picked out of the full history archive on QuoteForever. You will find Edward Gibbon, H. L. Mencken, Hannah Arendt and F. M. Powicke among them.

Read the list top to bottom, or use it as a starting point - every author name links to everything else they said, and every quote has its own page you can share or turn into an image.

1

We have seen over and over that white male historians in general have tended to dismiss any history they didn't themselves write,on the grounds that it is unserious, unscholarly, a fad, too "political," "merely" oral and thus unreliable.

2

History only exists, in the final analysis, for God.

3

On the day when man told the story of his life to man, history was born.

4

History has become more important than ever because of the to unprecedented ability of the historical sciences to take in man's life on earth as a whole.

5

The kitchen's a laboratory, and everything that happens there has to do with science. It's biology, chemistry, physics. Yes, there's history. Yes, there's artistry. Yes, to all of that. But what happened there, what actually happens to the food is all science.

6

We are all tourists in history, and irony is what we win in wars.

7

Time in its irresistible and ceaseless flow carries along on its flood all created things and drowns them in the depths of obscurity. . . . But the tale of history forms a very strong bulwark against the stream of time, and checks in some measure its irresistible flow, so that, of all things done in it, as many as history has taken over it secures and binds together, and does not allow them to slip away into the abyss of oblivion.

8

A myth is far truer than a history, for a history only gives a story of the shadows, whereas a myth gives a story of the substances that cast the shadows.

9

Food is everything we are. It's an extension of nationalist feeling, ethnic feeling, your personal history, your province, your region, your tribe, your grandma. It's inseparable from those from the get-go.

10

No individual is isolated. He who is sad, saddens others.

11

Humankind has understood history as a series of battles because, to this day, it regards conflict as the central facet of life.

12

A country grows in history not only because of the heroism of its troops on the field of battle, it grows also when it turns to justice and to right for the conservation of its interests.

13

History is a vision of God's creation on the move.

14

It is with nations as it is with individuals. A book of history is a book of sermons.

15

That great dust-heap called 'history'.

16

When we skim along the surface of history we see little but the rough barren rocks that rise out of it.

17

History shows that where ethics and economics come in conflict, victory is always with economics. Vested interests have never been known to have willingly divested themselves unless there was sufficient force to compel them.

18

History Coming too close Is monstrous, like a doll That is alive and bigger than the child Who tries to hold it.

19

Completeness is rare in history.

20

The English love an insult. It's their only test of a man's sincerity.

21

The Confederate Constitution was almost identical to that of the United States.

22

All historians, even the most scientific, have bias, if in no other sense than the determination not to have any.

23

Personally, I would be delighted if there were a life after death, especially if it permitted me to continue to learn about this world and others, if it gave me a chance to discover how history turns out.

24

The only important thing to realise about history is that it all took place in the last five minutes.

25

For women, history does not exist. Murasaki, Sappho, and Madame Lafayette might be their own contemporaries.

26

History thus becomes largely a study of character. Insight into temperament is hardly less important than the probing of "original materials."

27

Those who did not live during the years close to 1789 do not know the pleasure of living.

28

People have an annoying habit of remembering things they shouldn't.

29

Is he a good man?" "Define 'good'.

30

The East is marvellously interesting for tracing our steps back. But for going forward, it is nothing. All it can hope for is to be fertilised by Europe, so that it can start on a new phase.

31

World War II proved a hypothesis that Alexis de Tocqueville advanced a century before: the war-fighting potential of a democracy is at its greatest when war is most intense; at its weakest when war is most limited. This is a lesson with enduring relevance to our own times - and our own wars.

32

And why do we, who say we oppose tyranny and demand freedom of speech, allow people to go to prison and be vilified, and magazines to be closed down on the spot, for suggesting another version of history.

33

If history is any indication, all truths will eventually turn out to be false.

34

We intend to try and vote the Chinaman out, to frighten him out. And if this won't do it, to kill him out.

35

Visual surprise is natural in the Caribbean; it comes with the landscape, and faced with its beauty, the sigh of History dissolves.

36

Less is more, in prose as in architecture.

37

History's like a story in a way: it depends on who's telling it.

38

There is no life that does not contribute to history.

39

You can decide to invade Russia at dinner, pick Waterloo for battle on a whim. It's the details, the small stuff. Its easy to gamble a million lives. Whats hard is to see how that can hurt one single person. And if you cant keep that straight, hell, you'll lose your humanity.

40

One is certain of nothing but the truth of one's own emotions.

41

At a certain point one ceases to defend a certain view of history; one must defend history itself.

42

Continue to instruct the world; and - whilst we carry on a poor unequal conflict with the passions and prejudices of our day, perhaps with no better weapons than other passions and prejudices of our own - convey wisdom to future generations.

43

The economic interpretation of history does not necessarily mean that all events are determined solely by economic forces. It simply means that economic facts are the ever recurring decisive forces, the chief points in the process of history.

44

The frequent repetition of miracles serves to provoke, where it does not subdue, the reason of mankind.

45

Whatever evils either reason or declamation have imputed to extensive empire, the power of Rome was attended with some beneficial consequences to mankind; and the same freedom of intercourse which extended the vices, diffused likewise the improvements of social life.

46

If Julian had flattered himself that his personal connexion with the capital of the East would be productive of mutual satisfaction to the prince and people, he made a very false estimate of his own character, and of the manners of Antioch. The warmth of the climate disposed the natives to the most intemperate enjoyment of tranquillity and opulence; and the lively licentiousness of the Greeks was blended with the hereditary softness of the Syrians.

47

The voice of history is often little more than the organ of hatred or flattery.

48

The fabric of a mighty state, which has been reared by the labours of successive ages, could not be overturned by the misfortune of a single day, if the fatal power of the imagination did not exaggerate the real measure of the calamity.

49

The simple circumstantial narrative (did such a narrative exist) of the ruin of a single town, of the misfortunes of a single family, might exhibit an interesting and instructive picture of human manners; but the tedious repetition of vague and declamatory complaints would fatigue the attention of the most patient reader.

50

The value of money has been settled by general consent to express our wants and our property, as letters were invented to express our ideas; and both these institutions, by giving a more active energy to the powers and passions of human nature, have contributed to multiply the objects they were designed to represent.

51

The emperor of the East was no longer guided by the wisdom and authority of his elder brother, whose death happened towards the end of the preceding year: and, as the distressful situation of the Goths required an instant and peremptory decision, he was deprived of the favourite resource of feeble and timid minds; who consider the use of dilatory and ambiguous measures as the most admirable efforts of consummate prudence.

52

If this Punic war was carried on without any effusion of blood, it was owing much less to the moderation than to the weakness of the contending prelates.

53

Where the subject lies so far beyond our reach, the difference between the highest and the lowest of human understandings may indeed be calculated as infinitely small; yet the degree of weakness may perhaps be measured by the degree of obstinacy and dogmatic confidence.

54

This variety of objects will suspend, for some time, the course of the narrative; but the interruption will be censured only by those readers who are insensible to the importance of laws and manners, while they peruse, with eager curiosity, the transient intrigues of a court, or the accidental event of a battle.

55

I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.

56

If we do anything to further the kingdom of God, we may expect to find what Christ found on that road abuse, indifference, injustice, misunderstanding, trouble of some kind. Take it. Why not? To that you were called.

57

Getting its history wrong is part of being a nation.

58

It takes at least three trees to make a row, and it needs at least three facts to make a truth.

59

"The sounds of people drowning are something that I can not describe to you, and neither can anyone else. It's the most dreadful sound and there is a terrible silence that follows it."

60

Problems cannot all be solved, for, as they are solved, new aspects are continually revealed: the historian opens the way, he does not close it.

61

History is not a pattern-book of fossilized ideologies.

62

Thirty resolute men in your House of Commons could save the world.

63

Everything must be recaptured and relocated in the general framework of history, so that despite the difficulties, the fundamental paradoxes and contradictions, we may respect the unity of history which is also the unity of life.

64

I began revolution with 82 men. If I had to do it again, I do it with 10 or 15 and absolute faith. It does not matter how small you are if you have faith and plan of action.

65

To die for the revolution is a one-shot deal; to live for the revolution means taking on the more difficult commitment of changing our day-to-day life patterns.

66

First of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself - nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.

67

Historical! Must it be historical to catch your attention? Even though historicity, like notoriety, denotes nothing more than thatsomething has occurred.

68

Anyone who renounces the world must love all men, for he renounces their world too. He thus begins to have some inkling of the true nature of man, which cannot but be loved, always assuming that one is its peer.

69

We should always be aware that what now lies in the past once lay in the future.

70

The essential matter of history is not what happened but what people thought or said about it.

71

I do not think it is an exaggeration to say history is largely a history of inflation, usually inflations engineered by governments for the gain of governments.

72

The more abstract the truth you wish to teach, the more must you allure the senses to it.

73

Whoever heard of such a mixture of languages in one army, since there were French, Flemings, Frisians, Gauls, Sayonards, Lotharingians, Allemani, Bavarians, Normans, English, Scots, Aquitanians, Italians, Danes, Apulians, Iberians, Bretons, Greeks and Armenians.

74

Every true history must force us to remember that the past was once as real as the present and as uncertain as the future.

75

Until Eleanor Roosevelt, there was only one or two First Ladies in all of American history who made an impact, who people could even have recognized or identified. And it's really only been since Jackie Kennedy that there's been this idea that the family life of the president is such a central thing.

76

Here I am at the turn of the millennium and I'm still the last man to have walked on the moon, somewhat disappointing. It says more about what we have not done than about what we have done.

77

Regarding History as the slaughter-bench at which the happiness of peoples, the wisdom of States, and the virtue of individuals have been victimized--the question involuntarily arises--to what principle, to what final aim these enormous sacrifices have been offered.

78

World history is a court of judgment.

79

In 1688 England contracted to the Netherlands the highest debt that one nation can owe to another. Herself not knowing how to recover her liberties, they were restored by men of the United Provinces.

80

The happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history.

81

Mad, is he? Then I hope that he will bite some of my other generals!

82

Memoirs are the backstairs of history.

83

History has to move in a certain direction, even if it has to be pushed that way by neurotics.

84

Nothing is really so poor and melancholy as art that is interested in itself and not in its subject.

85

The deliberate and deadly attacks which were carried out yesterday against our country were more than acts of terror. They were acts of war.

86

This is an hour of history that troubles our minds and hurts our hearts.

87

A strange thing is memory, and hope; one looks backward, and the other forward; one is of today, the other of tomorrow. Memory is history recorded in our brain, memory is a painter, it paints pictures of the past and of the day.

88

History is nothing if not an epic tale of missed opportunities.

89

History deals mainly with captains and kings, gods and prophets, exploiters and despoilers, not with useful men.

90

The more I think you over, the more it comes home to me what an unmitigated Middle Victorian ass you are!

91

There is no record in human history of a happy philosopher: they exist only in romantic legend.

92

Outside the kingdom of the Lord there is no nation which is greater than any other. God and history will remember your judgment.

93

Soon we will be strangers. No, we can never be that. Hurting someone is an act of reluctant intimacy. We will be dangerous acquaintances with a history.

94

Every end in history necessarily contains a new beginning.

95

if we do not know our own history, we are doomed to live it as though it were our private fate.

96

Every thought is an afterthought.

97

Most of our people have never had it so good.

98

We deny the right of any portion of the species to decide for another portion what is and what is not their 'proper sphere.' The proper sphere for all human beings is the largest and highest which they are able to attain to.

99

History is only a catalogue of the forgotten.

100

A society in stable equilibrium is-by definition-one that has no history and wants no historians.

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