quotations about history
Sometimes ... history needs a push.
VLADIMIR LENIN
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attributed, Seeds of Revolution: A Collection of Axioms
History hath triumphed over time, which beside it nothing but eternity hath triumphed over.
WALTER RALEIGH
preface, History of the 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
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
Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.
KARL MARX
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
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
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
What would happen if history could be rewritten as casually as erasing a blackboard? Our past would be like the shifting sands at the seashore, constantly blown this way or that by the slightest breeze. History would be constantly changing every time someone spun the dial of a time machine and blundered his or her way into the past. History, as we know it, would be impossible. It would cease to exist.
MICHIO KAKU
Hyperspace
Myths ... collected like barnacles on history, obscuring the truth.
BRIAN HERBERT & KEVIN J. ANDERSON
Dune: House Harkonnen
History viewed from the inside is always a dark, digestive mess, far different from the easily recognizable cow viewed from afar by historians.
DAN SIMMONS
Hyperion
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 repeats itself.
ENGLISH PROVERB
Of all our studies, history is best qualified to reward our research. And when you see that you've got problems, all you have to do is examine the historic method used all over the world by others who have problems similar to yours. And once you see how they got theirs straight, then you know how you can get yours straight.
MALCOLM X
Message to the Grass Roots, Nov. 10, 1963
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
Longing on a large scale is what makes history.
DON DELILLO
Underworld
Poetry is written with tears, fiction with blood, and history with invisible ink.
CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON
The Angel's Game
I don't believe ... that history repeats itself. There is no cycle. History is permanently doing the same thing. Sometimes we don't notice what's going on, that's all--and sometimes we have no choice but to see.
MICHAEL MARSHALL
Blood of Angels
The nature of this melancholy becomes clearer, once one asks the question, with whom does the historical writer of historicism actually empathize. The answer is irrefutably with the victor. Those who currently rule are however the heirs of all those who have ever been victorious. Empathy with the victors thus comes to benefit the current rulers every time.
WALTER BENJAMIN
Theses on the Philosophy of History
History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.
MAYA ANGELOU
On the Pulse of the Morning