HISTORY QUOTES VIII

quotations about history

What is a great man who has made his mark upon history? Every time, if we think far enough, he is a man who has looked through the confusion of the moment and has seen the moral issue involved; he is a man who has refused to have his sense of justice distorted; he has listened to his conscience until conscience becomes a trumpet call to like-minded men, so that they gather about him, and together, with mutual purpose and mutual aid, they make a new period in history.

JANE ADDAMS

address to the Union League Club of Chicago, Feb. 23, 1903


Historians exercise great power and some of them know it. They recreate the past, changing it to fit their own interpretations. Thus, they change the future as well.

FRANK HERBERT

Heretics of Dune

Tags: Frank Herbert


History isn't the lies of the victors, as I once glibly assured Old Joe Hunt; I know that now. It's more the memories of the survivors, most of whom are neither victorious or defeated.

JULIAN BARNES

The Sense of an Ending

Tags: Julian Barnes


The historian's duty is to separate the true from the false, the certain from the uncertain, and the doubtful from that which cannot be accepted.

JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE

The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe

Tags: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe


The history of mankind is a romance, a mask, a tragedy, constructed upon the principles of POETICAL JUSTICE; it is a noble or royal hunt, in which what is sport to the few is death to the many, and in which the spectators halloo and encourage the strong to set upon the weak, and cry havoc in the chase, though they do not share in the spoil.

WILLIAM HAZLITT

Characters of Shakespeare's Plays

Tags: William Hazlitt


History gets written by the winners.

CASSANDRA CLARE

City of Lost Souls

Tags: Cassandra Clare


What are our pretended histories? Fables, jest-books, satires, apologies, anything but what they profess to be.

A. H. EVERETT

attributed, Day's Collacon


Many scholars have complained of our tendency to see history only in conflicts, but I am not convinced they are right. It is in conflict that our values are exposed.

BERNARD BECKETT

Genesis

Tags: Bernard Beckett


The inflexible integrity of the moral code is, to me, the secret of the authority, the dignity, the utility of History. If we may debase the currency for the sake of genius, or success, or rank, or reputation, we may debase it for the sake of a man’s influence, of his religion, of his party, of the good cause which prospers by his credit and suffers by his disgrace. Then History ceases to be a science, an arbiter of controversy, a guide of the Wanderer, the upholder of that moral standard which the powers of earth and religion itself tend constantly to depress. It serves where it ought to reign; and it serves the worst cause better than the purest.

LORD ACTON

letter to Mandell Creighton, Apr. 5, 1887


What experience and history teach is this -- that people and governments never have learned anything from history or acted on the principles deduced from it.

G.W.F. HEGEL

Philosophy of History

Tags: Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel


History, like love, is so apt to surround her heroes with an atmosphere of imaginary brightness.

JAMES FENIMORE COOPER

The Last of the Mohicans

Tags: James Fenimore Cooper


The great historian is he that can distinguish what is done from what happens.

IVAN PANIN

Thoughts

Tags: Ivan Panin


The inner reality of history is so unlike the back of the cards, and it takes so long to get at it, which does not prevent us from disbelieving what is current as history, but makes us wish to sift it, and dig through mud to solid foundations.

LORD ACTON

letter to Mary Gladstone, September 21, 1880


History is written by the winners.

ALEX HALEY

attributed, And I Quote

Tags: Alex Haley


Just as the human memory is not a passive recorder but a tool in the construction of the self, so history has never been a simple record of the past, but a means of shaping peoples.

ARTHUR C. CLARKE

The Light of Other Days

Tags: Arthur C. Clarke


On the breast of that huge Mississippi of falsehood called History, a foam-bell more or less is no consequence.

MATTHEW ARNOLD

"Literary Influence of Academies", Essays in Criticism


There is no history worthy attention save that of free nations; the history of nations under the sway of despotism is no more than a collection of anecdotes.

CHAMFORT

The Cynic's Breviary


Faithful, well-written history is a map, in which we trace the winding ways and manifold wonders of divine Providence.

JOHN THORNTON

Maxims and Directions for Youth


You know you're getting older when you notice that more and more history questions happened in your lifetime!

TOM WILSON

Ziggy, Jul. 3, 1999

Tags: Tom Wilson


The use of this feigned history hath been to give some shadow of satisfaction to the mind of man in those points wherein the nature of things doth deny it, the world being in proportion inferior to the soul; by reason whereof there is, agreeable to the spirit of man, a more ample greatness, a more exact goodness, and a more absolute variety, than can be found in the nature of things. Therefore, because the acts or events of true history have not that magnitude which satisfieth the mind of man, poesy feigneth acts and events greater and more heroical. Because true history propoundeth the successes and issues of actions not so agreeable to the merits of virtue and vice, therefore poesy feigns them more just in retribution, and more according to revealed Providence. Because true history representeth actions and events more ordinary and less interchanged, therefore poesy endueth them with more rareness and more unexpected and alternative variations. So as it appeareth that poesy serveth and conferreth to magnanimity, morality and to delectation. And therefore, it was ever thought to have some participation of divineness, because it doth raise and erect the mind, by submitting the shows of things to the desires of the mind; whereas reason doth buckle and bow the mind unto the nature of things. And we see that by these insinuations and congruities with man's nature and pleasure, joined also with the agreement and consort it hath with music, it hath had access and estimation in rude times and barbarous regions, where other learning stood excluded.

FRANCIS BACON

The Advancement of Learning

Tags: Francis Bacon