Quotes about History

“I always loved the Yorkshire members and was passionate about playing for the county, but the people who were running the club made it at times unbearable for me. The rulers had a history of doing what they wanted and sacking players seemingly on a whim.”

“Language is the most extraordinary invention in the history of humanity, the one which came before everything and which makes it possible to share everything.”

“Good fiction is about asserting the beauties of the world, inventing a new, positive thing. Where am I going to get that? And it should be original; it should not be cliched. So the way I looked at history was not to accuse it of failure.”

“The European leagues have been there a long time, the coaches have been there, the clubs have been there, there's history to the teams. There's already that football support culture.”

“Reading a newspaper is like reading someone's letters, as opposed to a biography or a history. The writer really does not know what will happen. A novelist needs to feel what that is like.”

“The whole history of civilization is strewn with creeds and institutions which were invaluable at first, and deadly afterwards.”

“Knowing more about family history is the single biggest predictor of a child's emotional well-being. Grandparents can play a special role in this process, too.”

“Our Founding Fathers crafted a constitutional Republic for the first time in the history of the world because they were shaping a form of government that would not have the failures of a democracy in it, but had the representation of democracy in it.”

“Literature overtakes history, for literature gives you more than one life. It expands experience and opens new opportunities to readers.”

“Few men in our history have ever obtained the Presidency by planning to obtain it.”

“I think my attitudes about the past are very traditional. You can't ignore history; you can't escape it even if you want to. You might as well know where you come from, and you might as well know that everything has been done in some shape or form.”

“I read a lot of history. The passive Jews in Germany didn't survive. The smart ones got out.”

“A true history of human events would show that a far larger proportion of our acts are the result of sudden impulse and accident than of that reason of which we so much boast.”

“History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. History is who we are and why we are the way we are.”

“I remember when I first saw Whoopi Goldberg doing standup, and she was wearing a sheet on her head, basically pretending to be this little white girl with long luxurious blonde hair. Everyone can relate to that. It's an oral history of black women's lives through laughter.”

“I made more lousy pictures than any actor in history.”

“If you read enough biography and history, you learn how people have dealt successfully or unsuccessfully with similar situations or patterns in the past. It doesn't give you a template of answers, but it does help you refine the questions you have to ask yourself.”

“Elimination of illiteracy is as serious an issue to our history as the abolition of slavery.”

“History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon.”

“There is no short and easy road, no magic cure for those ills which have afflicted mankind from the dawn of history.”

“The main essentials of a successful prime minister are sleep and a sense of history.”