Quotes about History

“History should be written as philosophy.”

“There are people in every time and every land who want to stop history in its tracks. They fear the future, mistrust the present, and invoke the security of a comfortable past which, in fact, never existed.”

“Man has the power to act as his own destroyer - and that is the way he has acted through most of his history.”

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

“The main thing is to make history, not to write it.”

“History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives.”

“When I was deciding whether or not to take the job at Celine, I didn't really look at the history of the house. I had other offers to come back, but they weren't right, or they wouldn't let me stay in London, which was non-negotiable.”

“Nothing would be more profitable to us than a right history of mankind.”

“Europe was created by history. America was created by philosophy.”

“Muhammadan law in its relation to women, is a pattern to European law. Look back to the history of Islam, and you will find that women have often taken leading places - on the throne, in the battle-field, in politics, in literature, poetry, etc.”

“Neither current events nor history show that the majority rule, or ever did rule.”

“History is not merely a procession of people in fancy dress fighting wars. It is crucially the story of man's evolution from grunting cave dweller to serious thinker, from cruelly retributive law to merciful law, from casual barbarism to care and compassion.”

“The applause of his native land is the richest reward to which the patriot ever aspires. It is this for which 'he bears to live or dares to die.' It is the high incentive to those achievements which illustrate the page of history and give to poetry its brightest charm.”

“It is in Rousseau's writing above all that history begins to turn from upper-class honour to middle-class humanitarianism. Pity, sympathy and compassion lie at the centre of his moral vision. Values associated with the feminine begin to infiltrate social existence as a whole, rather than being confined to the domestic sphere.”

“For the first time in history we can track the evolution of a pandemic in real time. Influenza viruses are notorious for their rapid mutation and unpredictable behaviour.”

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

“I know every note in every song, the whole history of it, even parts that were there and are gone.”

“I never feel lonely if I've got a book - they're like old friends. Even if you're not reading them over and over again, you know they are there. And they're part of your history. They sort of tell a story about your journey through life.”

“Leonardo Fibonacci, the great 13th century Italian mathematician (1175-1250) created the 'Fibonacci sequence' to explain behavior in nature mathematically. History has it that the first question he posed was how many rabbits would be created in one year starting with one pair.”

“Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.”

“In the course of history, men come to see that iron necessity is neither iron nor necessary.”