History Quotes: Timeless Wisdom from the Past

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

A. Whitney Brown, Comedian

"History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon"

Napoleon Bonaparte, Leader

"Blood alone moves the wheels of history"

Martin Luther, Professor

"A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots"

Marcus Garvey, Publisher

"History is a set of lies agreed upon"

Napoleon Bonaparte, Leader

"A lawyer without history or literature is a mechanic, a mere working mason; if he possesses some knowledge of these, he may venture to call himself an architect"

Walter Scott, Novelist

"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"

Benito Mussolini, Politician

"We have our own history, our own language, our own culture. But our destiny is also tied up with the destinies of other people - history has made us all South Africans"

Mangosuthu Buthelezi, Leader

"We would like to live as we once lived, but history will not permit it"

John F. Kennedy, President

"In fact history does not belong to us; but we belong to it"

Hans-Georg Gadamer, Philosopher

"History will be kind to me for I intend to write it"

Winston Churchill, Statesman

"History takes time. History makes memory"

Gertrude Stein, Author

"If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten"

Rudyard Kipling, Writer

"The artist's job is to be a witness to his time in history"

Robert Rauschenberg, Artist

"The history of mankind is a history of war"

Mike Love, Musician

"The history of free men is never really written by chance but by choice; their choice!"

Dwight D. Eisenhower, President

"The greatest honor history can bestow is that of peacemaker"

Richard M. Nixon, President

"For most of history, Anonymous was a woman"

Virginia Woolf, Author

"We live in an era with no historical precedents. History is no longer useful as a tool in helping us understand current changes"

Doug Coupland, Author

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

Edward Gibbon, Historian

"History is the interpretation of the significance that the past has for us"

Johan Huizinga, Historian

"But history is neither watchmaking nor cabinet construction. It is an endeavor toward better understanding"

Marc Bloch, Historian

"If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience"

George Bernard Shaw, Dramatist

"The writer may very well serve a movement of history as its mouthpiece, but he cannot of course create it"

Karl Marx, Philosopher

"If past history was all there was to the game, the richest people would be librarians"

Warren Buffett, Businessman

"Sometimes - history needs a push"

Vladimir Lenin, Leader

"The greatest tragedy in mankind's entire history may be the hijacking of morality by religion"

Arthur C. Clarke, Writer

"America is the only nation in history which miraculously has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilization"

Georges Clemenceau, Leader

"In the long course of history, having people who understand your thought is much greater security than another submarine"

J. William Fulbright, Politician

"All the ills of mankind, all the tragic misfortunes that fill the history books, all the political blunders, all the failures of the great leaders have arisen merely from a lack of skill at dancing"

Moliere, Playwright

"Developments in information technology and globalised media mean that the most powerful military in the history of the world can lose a war, not on the battlefield of dust and blood, but on the battlefield of world opinion"

Timothy Garton Ash, Author

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

Ted Koppel, Journalist

"The 4th Amendment and the personal rights it secures have a long history. At the very core stands the right of a man to retreat into his own home and there be free from unreasonable governmental intrusion"

Potter Stewart, Judge

"When you say things like, 'We have to wipe out the Taliban,' what does that mean? The Taliban is not a fixed number of people. The Taliban is an ideology that has sprung out of a history that, you know, America created anyway"

Arundhati Roy, Novelist

"Nothing is insignificant in the history of a young community, and - above all - nothing seems impossible"

Catherine Helen Spence, Author

"The history of the Church of Rome is a constant leakage of members into such breakaway cults, which go on splitting"

Mary Douglas, Scientist

"Yet, history has shown that if material force can defeat some ideologies it can no longer obliterate a civilization without destabilizing the whole planet"

Abdelaziz Bouteflika, Statesman

"The point in history at which we stand is full of promise and danger. The world will either move forward toward unity and widely shared prosperity - or it will move apart"

Franklin D. Roosevelt, President

"History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid"

Dwight D. Eisenhower, President

"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, President

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