All motion is cyclic. It circulates to the limits of its possibilities and then returns to its starting point.
—Robert Collier (1885–1950) American Self-Help Author
History has to be rewritten because history is the selection of those threads of causes or antecedents that we are interested in.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1841–1935) American Jurist, Author
The pyramids, attached with age, have forgotten the names of their founders.
—Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) American Inventor, Philosopher
History, though, shows us that the people who end up changing the world—the great political, scientific, social, technological, artistic, even sports revolutionaries—are always nuts, until they’re right, and then they’re geniuses.
—John Eliot (b.1971) American Psychologist, Academic
It is not “history” which uses men as a means of achieving—as if it were an individual person—its own ends. History is nothing but the activity of men in pursuit of their ends.
—Karl Marx (1818–1883) German Philosopher, Economist
History is a set of lies agreed upon.
—Napoleon I (1769–1821) Emperor of France
One cannot be a good historian of the outward, visible world without giving some thought to the hidden, private life of ordinary people; and on the other hand one cannot be a good historian of this inner life without taking into account outward events where these are relevant. They are two orders of fact which reflect each other, which are always linked and which sometimes provoke each other.
—Victor Hugo (1802–85) French Novelist
History is a relentless master. It has no present, only the past rushing into the future. To try to hold fast is to be swept aside.
—John F. Kennedy (1917–63) American Head of State, Journalist
The only thing new in the world is the history you don’t know.
—Harry S. Truman (1884–1972) American Head of State
History is but a kind of Newgate calendar, a register of the crimes and miseries that man has inflicted on his fellowman.
—Washington Irving (1783–1859) American Essayist, Biographer, Historian
Personal history must be constantly renewed by telling parents, relatives, and friends everything one does. On the other hand, for the warrior who has no personal history, no explanations are needed; nobody is angry or disillusioned with his acts. And above all, no one pins him down with their thoughts and their expectations.
—Carlos Castaneda (1925–98) Peruvian-born American Anthropologist, Author
History, although sometimes made up of the few acts of the great, is more often shaped by the many acts of the small.
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
To be ignorant of the lives of the most celebrated men of antiquity is to continue in a state of childhood.
—Plutarch (c.46–c.120 CE) Greek Biographer, Philosopher
Don’t be misled by History, or any other unreliable source.
—Will Rogers (1879–1935) American Actor, Rancher, Humorist
It is the true office of history to represent the events themselves, together with the counsels, and to leave the observations and conclusions thereupon to the liberty and faculty of every man’s judgment.
—Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English Philosopher
The value of history. ..is that it teaches us what man has done and thus what man is.
—R. G. Collingwood (1889–1943) English Philosopher, Historian, Archaeologist
Human history in essence is the history of ideas.
—H. G. Wells (1866–1946) English Novelist, Historian, Social Thinker
James Joyce is right about history being a nightmare—but it may be that nightmare from which no one can awaken. People are trapped in history and history in trapped in them.
—James Baldwin (1924–87) American Novelist, Social Critic
History is Philosophy teaching by examples.
—Thucydides (c.455?c.400 BCE) Greek Historian
The reason history is by turns gripping, boring and threatening is that it is a play in which the characters make up their lines as they go along.
—Dero A. Saunders (1914–2002) American Business Editor
History is not melodrama, even if it usually reads like that.
—Robert Penn Warren (1905–89) American Poet, Novelist, Literary Critic
You treat world history as a mathematician does mathematics, in which nothing but laws and formulas exist, no reality, no good and evil, no time, no yesterday, no tomorrow, nothing but an eternal, shallow, mathematical present.
—Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) German-born Swiss Novelist, Poet
In its amplest meaning History includes every trace and vestige of everything that man has done or thought since first he appeared on the earth.
—James Harvey Robinson (1863–1936) American Historian
History is the myth, the true myth, of man’s fall made manifest in time.
—Henry Miller (1891–1980) American Novelist
The history of mankind is his character.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German Poet
History remembers only the brilliant failures and the brilliant successes.
—Randolph Bourne (1886–1918) American Journalist, Social Critic
I am the son of two civilizations that at a certain age in history have formed a happy marriage. The first of these, seven thousand years old, is the Pharaonic civilization; the second, one thousand four hundred years old, is the Islamic civilization.
—Naguib Mahfouz (1911–2006) Egyptian Novelist
History is simply the version of past events that people have decided to agree on.
—Napoleon I (1769–1821) Emperor of France
Not to know what has been transacted in former times is to be always a child. If no use is made of the labors of past ages, the world must remain always in the infancy of knowledge.
—Cicero (106BCE–43BCE) Roman Philosopher, Orator, Politician, Lawyer
False history gets made all day, any day; the truth of the new is never on the news.
—Adrienne Rich (1929–2012) American Poet, Essayist
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