Bored of all that 'history repeats itself' shebang? Looking for some new ideas to impress your friends when talking about historical events, of which we seem to have more than enough these days? Well then, you've come to the exact right place at the exact right moment, for this is our selection of the best history quotes ever!
Now, most of these are famous people's quotes, but who said that it isn't cool to read what people who made history had to say about it? Others are just plain famous quotes - ones whose author might be a bit more obscure, but their words nevertheless made enough of an impact to stick around with us for literally ages to be met in school books and on coffee mugs. Of course, these quotes about history will also have some new info to share with you, although it is funny when you think that we ourselves are living in history, yet there's always something new about it. Well, anyhoo, you’d better check out these history quotes for yourself before we hammer some assumptions into you.
So, scroll on down below and check the undeniably powerful quotes out! Once you've skimmed through all of them, give the best quotes your vote, and share this inspiring but also slightly intimidating article with your friends!
#121
"The public history of modern art is the story of conventional people not knowing what they are dealing with." - Golda Meir
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#122
"A myth is far truer than a history, for a history only gives a story of the shadows, whereas a myth gives a story of the substances that cast the shadows." - Annie Besant
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#123
"Never doubt that you can change history. You already have." - Marge Piercy
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#124
"Whatever we do or fail to do will influence the course of history." - Arthur Henderson
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#125
"Without words, without writing and without books there would be no history, there could be no concept of humanity." - Hermann Hesse
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#126
"We can learn from history, but we can also deceive ourselves when we selectively take evidence from the past to justify what we have already made up our minds to do." ― Margaret MacMillan
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#127
“One of the deepest impulses in man is the impulse to record, to scratch a drawing on a tusk or keep a diary… The enduring value of the past is, one might say, the very basis of civilization.” - John Jay Chapman
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#128
“A historian ought to be exact, sincere and impartial, free from passion, unbiased by interest, fear, resentment or affection. And faithful to the truth, which is the mother of history, the preserver of great actions, the enemy of oblivion, the witness of the past, the director of the future.” - B. R. Ambedkar
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#129
“History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it.” - Winston Churchill
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#130
“As a historian, I have learned that, in fact, not everyone who reaches back into history can survive it. And it is not only reaching back that endangers us; sometimes history itself reaches inexorably forward for us with its shadowy claws.” ― Elizabeth Kostova
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#131
“To believe that what has not occurred in history will not occur at all, is to argue disbelief in the dignity of man.” ― Mahatma Gandhi
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#132
"Reading a book is like re-writing it for yourself. You bring to a novel, anything you read, all your experience of the world. You bring your history and you read it in your own terms." - Angela Carter
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#133
“The good historian… must be fearless, uncorrupted, free, the friend of truth and of liberty. One who calls a fig a fig, and a skiff a skiff, neither giving nor withholding from any, from favour or from enmity, not influenced by pity, by shame, or by remorse. A just judge… a stranger to all, of no country, bound only by his own laws, acknowledging no sovereign, never considering what this or that man may say of him, but relating faithfully everything as it happened.” - Lucian
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#134
“I don’t know much about history and I wouldn’t give a nickel for all the history in the world. It means nothing to me. History is more or less bunk. It’s tradition. We don’t want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history worth a tinker’s damn is the history we make today.” - Henry Ford
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