quotations about history
History is written by the victors, but it's victims who write the memoirs.
CAROL TAVRIS & ELLIOT ARONSON
Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me)
History is a relay of revolutions.
SAUL ALINSKY
Rules for Radicals
History, we know, is apt to repeat itself, and to foist very old incidents upon us with only a slight change of costume.
GEORGE ELIOT
Janet's Repentance
Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.
H.G. WELLS
The Outline of History
The history that most abounds in important incidents, soonest assumes the aspect of antiquity.
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER
The Deerslayer
What dependence can I have on the alleged events of ancient history, when I find such difficulty in ascertaining the truth regarding a matter that has taken place only a few minutes ago, and almost in my own presence!
SIR WALTER RALEIGH
attributed, Testimony: Its Posture in the Scientific World
All true histories contain instruction; though, in some, the treasure may be hard to find, and when found, so trivial in quantity that the dry, shrivelled kernel scarcely compensates for the trouble of cracking the nut.
ANNE BRONTE
Agnes Grey
History is a struggle between the "old" right that intended to be just and the "new" that promises to be.
REINHARD BENDIX
Truth and Ideology
History, which is a simple whore, has no decisive moments but is a proliferation of instants, brief interludes that vie with one another in monstrousness.
ROBERTO BOLAÑO
2666
Each day is a little bit of history.
JOSé SARAMAGO
Baltasar and Blimunda
Every moment happens twice: inside and outside, and they are two different histories.
ZADIE SMITH
White Teeth
I'm interested in the way in which the past affects the present and I think that if we understand a good deal more about history, we automatically understand a great more about contemporary life.
TONI MORRISON
Time interview, Jan. 21, 1998
People are absolutely haunted by [history]. You can see it at the swap meets.
PAMELA LANSDEN
"It's Monterey, Jack", Los Angeles Times, April 7, 1997
There is a history in all men's lives.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
King Henry IV, Part II
He who thoroughly understands the present epoch, must have reproduced, and lived through, in his private experience, all the religions, dispensations, and civilizations that preceded it.
WILLIAM BATCHELDER GREENE
Remarks on the Science of History
History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation.
JULIAN BARNES
The Sense of an Ending
One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us.
CARL SAGAN
The Demon-Haunted World
History, again, tells us of successive civilizations which have been born, have for a space thriven exceedingly, and have then miserably perished.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Essays and Addresses
History. The more of it you have the more you have to live it. After a little while there gets to be too much of it to memorize and maybe that's when empires start to decline.
JOHN UPDIKE
Rabbit is Rich
There are singular moments in history, dates that divide all that goes before from all that comes after.
GEORGE H. W. BUSH
State of the Union Address, Jan. 31, 1990