"Any fool can make history, but it takes genius to write it."
— Oscar Wilde, Irish author, poet, and playwright |
"History will be kind to me for I intend to write it."
— Sir Winston Churchill, British politican, author, and statesman |
"Anyone who believes you can't change history has never tried to write his memoirs."
— David Ben Gurion, Israeli statesman |
"Nothing capable of being memorized is history."
— R. G. Collingwood, English historian and philosopher |
"History is simply a piece of paper covered with print; the main thing is still to make history, not to write it."
— Otto Von Bismarck, Prussian statesman |
"History . . . is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind."
— Edward Gibbon, English historian and scholar |
"History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. History is who we are and why we are the way we are."
— David C. McCullough, American historian and author |
"When the past no longer illuminates the future, the spirit walks in darkness."
— Alexis de Tocqueville, French sociologist and political thinker |
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
— George Santayana, Spanish philosopher, poet, and essayist |
"We learn from history that we never learn anything from history."
— George Wilehlm Friedrich Hegel, philosopher |
"We can be almost certain of being wrong about the future, if we are wrong about the past."
— G. K. Chesterton, English writer |
"Only a good-for-nothing is not interested in his past."
— Sigmund Freud, Austrian neurologist and founder of psychoanalysis |
"History is the witness that testifies to the passing of time; it illuminates reality, vitalizes memory, provides guidance in daily life, and brings us tidings of antiquity."
— Marcus Tullius Cicero, Roman statesman, scholar, and writer |
"History: An account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools."
— Ambrose Bierce, American newspaper man, philosopher, satirist, and short story writer |
"Mankind are so much the same, in all times and places, that history informs us of nothing new or strange in this particular. Its chief use is only to discover the constant and universal principles of human nature."
— David Hume, Scottish philosopher |
"This I regard as history's highest function, to let no worthy action be uncommemorated, and to hold out the reprobation of posterity as a terror to evil words and deeds."
— Tacitus, Roman orator, public official, writer, and historian |
"Dwell on the past and you’ll lose an eye. Forget the past and you’ll lose both eyes."
— Russian proverb |
"Very deep, very deep is the well of the past. Should we not call it bottomless?"
— Thomas Mann, German writer and Nobel laureate |
"There is properly no history, only biography."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson, American poet, philosopher, and essayist |
"History is filled with the sound of silken slippers going downstairs and wooden shoes coming up." — Voltaire, French philosopher
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