Political history is far too criminal and pathological to be a fit subject of study for the young. Children should acquire their heroes and villains from fiction.

- W.H. Auden

Unknown Author

(top)

History is herstory, too.

- Unknown Author

History teaches us the mistakes we are going to make.

- Unknown Author

Francis Bacon

(top)

It is the true office of history to represent the events themselves, together with the counsels, and to leave the observations and conclusions thereupon to the liberty and faculty of every man's judgment.

- Francis Bacon

Arthur Baer

(top)

History is petrified imagination.

- Arthur Baer

Thomas A. Bailey

(top)

Too many historical writers are the votaries of cults, which, by definition are dedicated to whitewashing warts and hanging halos.

- Thomas A. Bailey

Too many so-called historians are really 'hysterians'; their thinking is more visceral than cerebral. When their duties as citizens clash with their responsibilities as scholars, Clio frequently takes a back seat.

- Thomas A. Bailey

James Baldwin

(top)

People are trapped in history, and history is trapped in them.

- James Baldwin

John Barth

(top)

More history's made by secret handshakes than by battles, bills, and proclamations.

- John Barth

Jacques Barzun

(top)

History, like a vast river, propels logs, vegetation, rafts, and debris; it is full of live and dead things, some destined for resurrection; it mingles many waters and holds in solution invisible substances stolen from distant soils.

- Jacques Barzun

That is the triumph of history - truth absolute is not at hand; the original with which to match the copy does not exist.

- Jacques Barzun

Ambrose Bierce

(top)

Historian: A broad-gauge gossip.

- Ambrose Bierce

History: An account mostly false, of events mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly fools.

- Ambrose Bierce

Augustine Birrell

(top)

History is a pageant and not a philosophy.

- Augustine Birrell

John Bogle

(top)

Treat history with the respect it deserves - neither too much nor too little

- John Bogle

Alan Whitney Brown

(top)

The past actually happened but history is only what someone wrote down.

- Alan Whitney Brown

Pearl S. Buck

(top)

If you want to understand today, you have to search yesterday.

- Pearl S. Buck

Samuel Butler

(top)

God cannot alter the past, though historians can.

- Samuel Butler

Albert Camus

(top)

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

- Albert Camus

The entire history of mankind is, in any case, nothing but a prolonged fight to the death for the conquest of universal prestige and absolute power.

- Albert Camus

Elias Canetti

(top)

History portrays everything as if it could not have come otherwise. History is on the side of what happened.

- Elias Canetti

Thomas Carlyle

(top)

Histories are a kind of distilled newspapers.

- Thomas Carlyle

History is a great dust heap.

- Thomas Carlyle

History is a mighty dramos, enacted upon the theatre of times, with suns for lamps and eternity for a background.

- Thomas Carlyle

In a certain sense all men are historians.

- Thomas Carlyle

It is part of my creed that the only poetry is history, could we tell it right.

- Thomas Carlyle

The happiest hours of mankind are recorded on the blank pages of history.

- Thomas Carlyle

The Present is the living sum-total of the whole Past.

- Thomas Carlyle

What mountains of dead ashes, wreck and burnt bones, does assiduous pedantry dig up from the past time and name it History.

- Thomas Carlyle

Bruce Catton

(top)

Even the most painstaking history is a bridge across an eternal mystery.

- Bruce Catton

Sébastien Roch Nicolas Chamfort

(top)

Almost the whole of history is but a sequence of horrors.

- Sébastien Roch Nicolas Chamfort

John Jay Chapman

(top)

One of the deepest impulses in man is the impulse to record, - to scratch a drawing on a tusk or keep a diary, to collect sagas and heap cairns. This instinct as to the enduring value of the past is, one might say, the very basis of civilization.

- John Jay Chapman

Sir Winston Churchill

(top)

History with its flickering lamp stumbles along the trail of the past, trying to reconstruct its scenes, to revive its echoes, and kindle with pale gleams the passion of former days.

- Sir Winston Churchill

Henry Steele Commanger

(top)

History is a jangle of accidents, blunders, surprises and absurdities, and so is our knowledge of it, but if we are to report it at all we must impose some order upon it.

- Henry Steele Commanger

Mason Cooley

(top)

Radical historians now the tell the story of Thanksgiving from the point of view of the turkey.

- Mason Cooley

Norman Cousins

(top)

History is a vast early warning system.

- Norman Cousins

John Dewey

(top)

Our historic imagination is at best slightly developed. We generalise and idealise the past egregiously. We set up little toys to stand as symbols for centuries and the complicated lives of countless individuals.

- John Dewey

Alexandre Dumas

(top)

History is but the nail on which the picture hangs.

- Alexandre Dumas

Will Durant

(top)

Civilization is a stream with banks. The stream is sometimes filled with blood from people killing, stealing, shouting and doing the things historians usually record, while on the banks, unnoticed, people build homes, make love, raise children, sing songs, write poetry and even whittle statues. The story of civilization is the story of what happened on the banks. Historians are pessimists because they ignore the banks for the river.

- Will Durant

Dwight D. Eisenhower

(top)

Neither a wise man nor a brave man lies down on the tracks of history to wait for the train of the future to run over him.

- Dwight D. Eisenhower

Paul Eldridge

(top)

History is the transformation of tumultuous conquerors into silent footnotes.

- Paul Eldridge

Ralph Waldo Emerson

(top)

All history becomes subjective; in other words there is properly no history, only biography.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

History is the action and reaction of these two, nature and thought - two boys pushing each other on the curbstone of the pavement.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Henry Ford

(top)

I don't know much about history, and I wouldn't give a nickel for all the history in the world. History is more or less bunk. It is a tradition. We want to live in the present, and the only history that is worth a tinker's damn is the history we make today.

- Henry Ford

E.M. Forster

(top)

It is pleasant to be transferred from an office where one is afraid of a sergeant-major into an office where one can intimidate generals, and perhaps this is why history is so attractive to the more timid among us. We can recover self-confidence by snubbing the dead.

- E.M. Forster

Anatole France

(top)

When a history book contains no lies it is always tedious.

- Anatole France

Thomas Fuller

(top)

History maketh a young man to be old, without either wrinkles or gray hairs; priviledging him with the experience of age, without either the infirmities or inconveniences thereof.

- Thomas Fuller

John W. Gardner

(top)

History never looks like history when you are living through it.

- John W. Gardner

James A. Garfield

(top)

The lesson of history is rarely learned by the actors themselves.

- James A. Garfield

José Ortega y Gasset

(top)

The tapestry of history that seems so full of tragedy when viewed from the front has countless comic scenes woven into its reverse side. In truth, tragedy and comedy are the twin masks of history - its mass appeal.

- José Ortega y Gasset

Pieter Geyl

(top)

Wars usually have the effect of speeding up the process of history.

- Pieter Geyl

History is an argument without end.

- Pieter Geyl

Edward Gibbon

(top)

The theologian may indulge the pleasing task of describing Religion as she descended from Heaven, arrayed in her native purity. A more melancholy duty is imposed on the historian. He must discover the inevitable mixture of error and corruption which she contracted in a long residence upon earth, among a weak and degenerate race of beings.

- Edward Gibbon

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

(top)

History is a mixture of error and violence.

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Sin writes histories, goodness is silent.

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Alex Haley

(top)

History is written by the winners.

- Alex Haley

Nathaniel Hawthorne

(top)

The Past lies upon the Present like a giant's dead body.

- Nathaniel Hawthorne

Joseph Heller

(top)

History was a trash bag of random coincidences torn open in a wind. Surely, Watt with his steam engine, Faraday with his electric motor, and Edison with his incandescent light bulb did not have it as their goal to contribute to a fuel shortage some day that would place their countries at the mercy of Arab oil.

- Joseph Heller

Eric Hoffer

(top)

The game of history is usually played by the best and the worst over the heads of the majority in the middle.

- Eric Hoffer

Elbert Hubbard

(top)

History: a collection of epitaphs.

- Elbert Hubbard

History: gossip well told.

- Elbert Hubbard

Washington Irving

(top)

For what is history, but... huge libel on human nature, to which we industriously add page after page, volume after volume, as if we were holding up a monument to the honor, rather than the infamy of our species.

- Washington Irving

History fades into fable; fact becomes clouded with doubt and controversy; the inscription molders from the tablet: the statue falls from the pedestal. Columns, arches, pyramids, what are they but heaps of sand; and their epitaphs, but characters written in the dust?

- Washington Irving

Henry James

(top)

It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.

- Henry James

William James

(top)

History is a bath of blood.

- William James

Thomas Jefferson

(top)

A morsel of genuine history is a thing so rare as to be always valuable.

- Thomas Jefferson

History, in general, only informs us what bad government is.

- Thomas Jefferson

Samuel Johnson

(top)

This is my history; like all other histories, a narrative of misery.

- Samuel Johnson

Franklin P. Jones

(top)

Perhaps nobody has changed the course of history as much as the historians.

- Franklin P. Jones

James Joyce

(top)

History... is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.

- James Joyce

Ted Koppel

(top)

History is a tool used by politicians to justify their intentions.

- Ted Koppel

Walter Savage Landor

(top)

Every great writer is a writer of history, let him treat on almost any subject he may.

- Walter Savage Landor

John Leonard

(top)

Isn't it amazing the way the future succeeds in creating an appropriate past?

- John Leonard

Hendrik Wilhelm van Loon

(top)

The history of the world is the record of a man in quest of his daily bread and butter.

- Hendrik Wilhelm van Loon

Robert S. Lynd

(top)

History is the story of the magnificent rear-guard action fought during several thousand years by dogma against curiosity.

- Robert S. Lynd

Thomas Babington Macaulay

(top)

A history in which every particular incident may be true may on the whole be false.

- Thomas Babington Macaulay

History begins in novel and ends in essay.

- Thomas Babington Macaulay

The best portraits are perhaps those in which there is a slight mixture of caricature; and we are not certain that the best histories are not those in which a little of the exaggeration of fictitious narrative is judiciously employed. Something is lost in accuracy; but much is gained in effect. The fainter lines are neglected; but the great characteristic features are imprinted on the mind forever.

- Thomas Babington Macaulay

Guy de Maupassant

(top)

History, that excitable and unreliable old lady.

- Guy de Maupassant

Frederick Maurice Powicke

(top)

History is full of the dead weight of things which have escaped the control of the mind, yet drive man on with a blind force.

- Frederick Maurice Powicke

History is not a pattern-book of fossilized ideologies.

- Frederick Maurice Powicke

Mary McCarthy

(top)

Every age has a keyhole to which its eye is pasted.

- Mary McCarthy

For me, in fact, the mark of the historic is the nonchalance with which it picks up an individual and deposits him in a trend, like a house playfully moved by a tornado.

- Mary McCarthy

David McCullough

(top)

A nation that forgets its past can function no better than an individual with amnesia.

- David McCullough

History is who we are and why we are the way we are.

- David McCullough

Henry Louis Mencken

(top)

Historian: an unsuccessful novelist.

- Henry Louis Mencken

Legend: A lie that has attained the dignity of age.

- Henry Louis Mencken

Henry Miller

(top)

History is the myth, the true myth, of man's fall made manifest in time.

- Henry Miller

Michel de Montaigne

(top)

The middle sort of historians (of which the most part are) spoil all; they will chew our meat for us.

- Michel de Montaigne

John Morley

(top)

The historian has been the hearth at which the soul of the country has been kept alive.

- John Morley

Jawaharlal Nehru

(top)

You don't change the course of history by turning the faces of portraits to the wall.

- Jawaharlal Nehru

Allan Nevins

(top)

History is never above the melee. It is not allowed to be neutral, but forced to enlist in every army.

- Allan Nevins

History is the sextant of states which, tossed by wind and current, would be lost in confusion if they could not fix their position.

- Allan Nevins

Max Nordau

(top)

History is a melodrama on the theme of parasitism, characterized by scenes that are exciting or dull, as the case may be, and many a sudden stagetrick.

- Max Nordau

Bill Nye

(top)

History is but the record of the public and official acts of human beings. It is our object, therefore, to humanize our history and deal with people past and present; people who ate and possibly drank; people who were born, flourished and died; not grave tragedians, posing perpetually for their photographs.

- Bill Nye

William O'Neill

(top)

History will repeat itself.

- William O'Neill

P.J. O'Rourke

(top)

Oh, God. The Sixties are coming back. Well I've got a 12-gauge double-barreled duck gun chambered for three-inch Magnum shells. And - speaking strictly for this retired hippie and former pinko beatnik - if the Sixties head my way, they won't get past the porch steps. They will be history. Which, for chrissakes, is what they're supposed to be.

- P.J. O'Rourke

Plato

(top)

Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.

- Plato

African Proverb

(top)

Until lions have their historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunters.

- African Proverb

Ayn Rand

(top)

Every major horror of history was committed in the name of an altruistic motive. Has any act of selfishness ever equaled the carnage perpetrated by disciples of altruism?

- Ayn Rand

Will Rogers

(top)

A lot of guys have had a lot of fun joking about Henry Ford because he admitted one time that he didn't know history. He don't know it, but history will know him. He has made more history than his critics ever read.

- Will Rogers

Jules Romains

(top)

History: the category of human phenomena which tends to catastrophe.

- Jules Romains

Edgar Saltus

(top)

Skepticism is history's bedfellow.

- Edgar Saltus

Gaetano Salvemini

(top)

The historian amputates reality.

- Gaetano Salvemini

The historian has before him a jigsaw puzzle from which many pieces have disappeared. These gaps can be filled only by his imagination.

- Gaetano Salvemini

George Santayana

(top)

Historical investigation has for its aim to fix the order and character of events throughout past time and in all places. The task is frankly superhuman.

- George Santayana

History is a pack of lies about events that never happened told by people who weren't there.

- George Santayana

Percy bysshe Shelley

(top)

History is a cyclic poem written by Time upon the memories of man.

- Percy bysshe Shelley

Dame Edith Sitwell

(top)

History is that terrible mill in which sawdust rejoins sawdust.

- Dame Edith Sitwell

Robert Louis Stevenson

(top)

The obscurest epoch is today.

- Robert Louis Stevenson

Thucydides

(top)

History is philosophy teaching by examples.

- Thucydides

Alexis de Tocqueville

(top)

History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies.

- Alexis de Tocqueville

Arnold Toynbee

(top)

Some historians hold that history is just one damned thing after another.

- Arnold Toynbee

George Macaulay Trevelyan

(top)

And how fascinating history is - the long, variegated pageant of man's still continuing evolution of this strange planet, so much the most interesting of all the myriads of spinners through space.

- George Macaulay Trevelyan

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

- George Macaulay Trevelyan

History is the open Bible: we historians are not priests to expound it infallibly: our function is to teach people to read it and to reflect upon it for themselves.

- George Macaulay Trevelyan

If one could make alive again for other people some cobwebbed skein of old dead intrigues and breathe breath and character into dead names and stiff portraits. That is history to me!

- George Macaulay Trevelyan

Mark Twain

(top)

The very ink with which all history is written is merely fluid prejudice.

- Mark Twain

Miguel de Unamuno

(top)

The mists remain of the false glory that erupts from history.

- Miguel de Unamuno

Paul Valéry

(top)

History is the most dangerous product which the chemistry of the mind has concocted. Its properties are well known. It produces dreams and drunkenness. It fills people with false memories, exaggerates their reactions, exacerbates old grievances, torments them in their repose, and encourages either a delirium of grandeur or a delusion of persecution. It makes whole nations bitter, arrogant, insufferable and vainglorious.

- Paul Valéry

Bill Vaughan

(top)

It might be a good idea if the various countries of the world would occasionally swap history books, just to see what other people are doing with the same set of facts.

- Bill Vaughan

Voltaire

(top)

All the ancient histories, as one of our wits say, are just fables that have been agreed upon.

- Voltaire

Historians are gossips who tease the dead.

- Voltaire

History in general is a collection of crimes, follies, and misfortunes among which we have now and then met with a few virtues, and some happy times.

- Voltaire

History is filled with the sound of silken slippers going downstairs and wooden shoes coming up.

- Voltaire

History supplies little beyond a list of those who have accommodated themselves with the property of others.

- Voltaire

What would constitute useful history? That which should teach us our duties and our rights, without appearing to teach them.

- Voltaire

Robert Penn Warren

(top)

A look at the past reminds us of how great is the distance, and how short, over which we have come. The past makes us ask what we have done with us. It makes us ask whether our very achievements are not ironical counterpoint and contrast to our fundamental failures.

- Robert Penn Warren

We are the prisoners of history. Or are we?

- Robert Penn Warren

Jessamyn West

(top)

The past is really almost as much a work of the imagination as the future.

- Jessamyn West

Rebecca West

(top)

It is a great pity that every human being does not, at an early stage of his life, have to write a historical work. He would then realize that the human race is in quite a jam about truth.

- Rebecca West

Lynn, Jr. White

(top)

Knowledge of history frees us to be contemporary.

- Lynn, Jr. White

The historian lays humanity on the couch.

- Lynn, Jr. White

Alfred North Whitehead

(top)

The real history does not get written, because it is not in people's brains but in their nerves and vitals.

- Alfred North Whitehead

Walt Whitman

(top)

As soon as histories are properly told there is no more need of romances.

- Walt Whitman

Oscar Wilde

(top)

History is merely gossip.

- Oscar Wilde

Georg Wilhelm

(top)

History... is, indeed, little more than the register of the 'crimes, follies, and misfortunes' of mankind. But what experience and history teach is this - that peoples and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.

- Georg Wilhelm

William Carlow Williams

(top)

History is a tyranny over the souls of the dead - and so the imagination of the living.

- William Carlow Williams

Philip Wylie

(top)

Our history is every human history; a black and gory business, with more scoundrels than wise men at the lead, and more louts than both put together to cheer and follow.

- Philip Wylie