History Quotes

"The people in Japan know more about the history of jazz and the musicians than the people in the United States do"

"The southward advance of native African farmers with Central African crops halted in Natal, beyond which Central African crops couldn't grow - with enormous consequences for the recent history of South Africa"

Jared Diamond, Author

"The past history of our globe must be explained by what can be seen to be happening now. No powers are to be employed that are not natural to the globe, no action to be admitted except those of which we know the principle"

James Hutton, Scientist

"History is the transformation of tumultuous conquerors into silent footnotes"

Paul Eldridge, Educator

"Debate and divergence of views can only enrich our history and culture"

Ibrahim Babangida, Statesman

"I really believed that if I could play that character, who is grounded in the earth and the history of the United States - not the kind of role I usually play - it would help me change the perception out there and my own perception of what I can accomplish as a performer"

Andrea Martin, Actor

"History has repeatedly shown that when a new method or material becomes available, new uses for it arise"

Wilson Greatbatch, Inventor

"It has been generally the custom of writers on natural history to take the habits and instincts of animals as the fixed point, and to consider their structure and organization as specially adapted to be in accordance with them"

Alfred Russel Wallace, Scientist

"I have the opportunity to be part of swimming history. To take the sport to a new level would be an honor for me. There's no better time to try this than now"

Michael Phelps, Athlete

"Our flag honors those who have fought to protect it, and is a reminder of the sacrifice of our nation's founders and heroes. As the ultimate icon of America's storied history, the Stars and Stripes represents the very best of this nation"

Joe Barton, Politician

"History is littered with wars which everybody knew would never happen"

Enoch Powell, Politician

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

Anatole Broyard, Critic

"I call on everyone of goodwill both in Ireland and abroad to join now in ensuring that the beginning of peace becomes a reality, before this year is out. Let us together open a new era in our history"

Albert Reynolds, Politician

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

Ted Koppel, Journalist

"I don't compete with other discus throwers. I compete with my own history"

Al Oerter, Athlete

"I really want to do a book on the history of the no-wave music scene in New York, how it extended out and formed lots of other things. It was such a great visual culture"

Thurston Moore, Musician

"The memories of men are too frail a thread to hang history from"

John Still, Clergyman

"From the beginning of our history the country has been afflicted with compromise. It is by compromise that human rights have been abandoned"

Charles Sumner, Politician

"As history since Hiroshima shows, the best, perhaps the only, way to curb war is to deter it with such overwhelming force as to turn it from a struggle into suicide"

Martin van Creveld, Historian

"The most superficial student of Roman history must be struck by the extraordinary degree in which the fortunes of the republic were affected by the presence of foreigners, under different names, on her soil"

Henry James Sumner Maine, Historian

"I never thought about becoming a politician. But during the military dictatorship, my grandfather was put in prison six times and my father twice. If my family and my country didn't have this history, I might be a professor somewhere today"

Georgios A. Papandreou, Politician

"The library is the temple of learning, and learning has liberated more people than all the wars in history"

Carl T. Rowan, Journalist

"And certainly the history of public sculpture has been disastrous but that doesn't mean it ought not to continue and the only way it even has a chance to continue is if the work gets out into the public"

Richard Serra, Sculptor

"The difference between me and the newer artists is that I have the history with the architects, the masters that started the music. I know where the music came from"

Ricky Skaggs, Musician

"World War II was a decisive time in our history and June 6, 1944, marked the decisive moment of the war"

Lane Evans, Politician

"No people in the history of the world have ever been so misunderstood, so misjudged, and so cruelly maligned"

John Brown Gordon, Soldier

"One hardly knows where, in the history of science, to look for an important movement that had its effective start in so pure and simple an accident as that which led to the building of the great Washington telescope, and went on to the discovery of the satellites of Mars"

Simon Newcomb, Mathematician

"The big battle at the end of DW isn't drawn from history, but it's influenced by history, certainly"

Walter Jon Williams, Writer

"Value your freedom or you will lose it, teaches history. 'Don't bother us with politics', respond those who don't want to learn"

Richard Stallman, Scientist

"I think we're struggling with trying to redefine various positions at this point in history. To allow freedom for women, freedom for men, freedom from those sharply defined gender roles"

Fred Ward, Actor

"Government has never increased the standard of living of one single human being in civilization's history. For some reason that simple truth has evaded everybody"

Steve Wynn, Businessman

"And thus goes segregation which is the most far-reaching development in the history of the Negro since the enslavement of the race"

Carter G. Woodson, Historian

"All of this got me thinking about the history of the westward expansion, and got me to wondering how the exploration of the Solar System would be changed if there were an indigenous presence out there"

Sarah Zettel, Author

"Great men are usually the products of their times and one of the men developed by these times takes rank with the greatest railroad leaders in history"

John Moody, Businessman

"The history of Hillary Clinton as a five-year senator is to promote Hillary Clinton and not the needs of New Yorkers"

John Spencer, Actor

"From a reality perspective, I'm sure part of that is true, but this is the largest blackout in U.S. history. If that is not a signal that we have got a problem that needs to be fixed, I don't know what is"

Jennifer Granholm, Politician

"Among famous traitors of history one might mention the weather"

Ilka Chase, Actress

"History is Philosophy teaching by examples"

Thucydides, Historian

"I had learned what wealth was, and a great deal about production and exchange for myself in the early history of South Australia - of the value of machinery, of roads and bridges, and of ports for transport and export"

Catherine Helen Spence, Author

"From William of Orange to William Pitt the younger there was but one man without whom English history must have taken a different turn, and that was William Pitt the elder"

Albert Bushnell Hart, Historian

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