Quotes about history and historians

"History is little more than the register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind."

Gibbon, Edward on history and historians
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"He is the purest figure in history. [About George Washington]"

Gladstone, William E. on history and historians   

"The history of mankind is his character."

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von on history and historians
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"History repeats itself. Historians repeat each other."

Guedalla, Philip on history and historians   

"The only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history."

Hegel, Friedrich on history and historians
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"A generation which ignores history has no past and no future."

Heinlein, Robert on history and historians
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"You treat world history as a mathematician does mathematics, in which nothing but laws and formulas exist, no reality, no good and evil, no time, no yesterday, no tomorrow, nothing but an eternal, shallow, mathematical present."

Hesse, Hermann on history and historians   

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

Hoffer, Eric on history and historians
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"A page of history is worth a pound of logic."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on history and historians
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"Every library should try to be complete on something, if it were only the history of pinheads."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on history and historians   

"One cannot be a good historian of the outward, visible world without giving some thought to the hidden, private life of ordinary people; and on the other hand one cannot be a good historian of this inner life without taking into account outward events where these are relevant. They are two orders of fact which reflect each other, which are always linked and which sometimes provoke each other."

Hugo, Victor on history and historians
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"It does seem so pleasant to talk with an old acquaintance who knows what you know. I see so many new folks nowadays who seem to have neither past nor future. Conversation has got to have some root in the past, or else you have got to explain every remark you make, and it wears a person out."

Jewett, Sarah Orne on history and historians   

"Great abilities are not requisite for an Historian; for in historical composition, all the greatest powers of the human mind are quiescent. He has facts ready to his hand; so there is no exercise of invention. Imagination is not required in any degree; only about as much as is used in the lowest kinds of poetry. Some penetration, accuracy, and coloring, will fit a man for the task, if he can give the application which is necessary."

Johnson, Samuel on history and historians   

"Few will have the greatness to bend history itself; but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total; of all those acts will be written the history of this generation."

Kennedy, Robert F. on history and historians
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"History is a better guide than good intentions."

Kirkpatrick, Jeane on history and historians   

"Providence conceals itself in the details of human affairs, but becomes unveiled in the generalities of history."

Lamartine, Alphonse De on history and historians   

"History tells us more than we want to know about what is wrong with man, and we can hardly turn a page in the daily press without learning the specific time, place, and name of evil. But perhaps the most pervasive evil of all rarely appears in the news. This evil, the waste of human potential, is particularly painful to recognize for it strikes our parents and children, our friends and brothers, ourselves."

Leonard, George on history and historians   

"Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history."

Lincoln, Abraham on history and historians
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"History, is made up of the bad actions of extraordinary men and woman. All the most noted destroyers and deceivers of our species, all the founders of arbitrary governments and false religions have been extraordinary people; and nine tenths of the calamities that have befallen the human race had no other origin than the union of high intelligence with low desires."

Macaulay, Thomas B. on history and historians   

"The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles."

Marx, Karl on history and historians
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"Historian -- an unsuccessful novelist."

Mencken, H. L. on history and historians   

"The men who make history have not time to write it."

Metternich, Klemens Von on history and historians   

"I love those historians that are either very simple or most excellent. Such as are between both (which is the most common fashion), it is they that spoil all; they will needs chew our meat for us and take upon them a law to judge, and by consequence to square and incline the story according to their fantasy."

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De on history and historians   

"It is humiliating to remain with our hands folded while others write history. It matters little who wins. To make a people great it is necessary to send them to battle even if you have to kick them in the pants. That is what I shall do."

Mussolini, Benito on history and historians   

"To be ignorant of the lives of the most celebrated men of antiquity is to continue in a state of childhood all our days."

Plutarch on history and historians   

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

Proverb, African on history and historians
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"However gradual the course of history, there must always be the day, even an hour and minute, when some significant action is performed for the first or last time."

Quennell, Peter on history and historians   

"Historians desiring to write the actions of men, ought to set down the simple truth, and not say anything for love or hatred; also to choose such an opportunity for writing as it may be lawful to think what they will, and write what they think, which is a rare happiness of the time."

Raleigh, Sir Walter on history and historians   

"A land without ruins is a land without memories -- a land without memories is a land without history."

Ryan, Abram Joseph on history and historians
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"History is always written wrong, and so always needs to be rewritten."

Santayana, George on history and historians
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"Historians are left forever chasing shadows, painfully aware of their inability ever to reconstruct a dead world in its completeness however thorough or revealing their documentation. We are doomed to be forever hailing someone who has just gone around the corner and out of earshot."

Schama, Simon on history and historians   

"Historians are prophets with their face turned backward."

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von on history and historians   

"There is a history in all men's lives."

Shakespeare, William on history and historians
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"Ignorance is the first requisite of the historian -- ignorance, which simplifies and clarifies, which selects and omits, with a placid perfection unattainable by the highest art."

Strachey, Lytton on history and historians   

"Study men, not historians."

Truman, Harry S on history and historians   

"History is strewn thick with evidence that a truth is not hard to kill, but a lie, well told, is immortal."

Twain, Mark on history and historians
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"Never forget the importance of history. To know nothing of what happened before you took your place on earth, is to remain a child for ever and ever."

Unknown, Source on history and historians
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"History is one of the most remarkable things in our lives. The mere fact it occurred makes it remarkable."

Unknown, Source on history and historians   

"Every time history repeats itself the price goes up."

Unknown, Source on history and historians
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"Caesar had perished from the world of men, had not his sword been rescued by his pen."

Vaughan, Henry on history and historians