Quotes on History

My writing has to support more than my research habit, but I love to curl up with a book about some dusty corner of history.

Author: Lynn Abbey

I got a call to come in and meet Fox, and the rest is history.

Author: Paula Abdul

Black people don't have an accurate idea of their history, which has been either suppressed or distorted.

Author: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

You can't walk alone. Many have given the illusion, but none have really walked alone. Man is not made that way. Each man is bedded in his people, their history, their culture, and their values.

Author: Peter Abrahams

I did this within a philosophical framework, and a moral and legal framework. And I have been turned into a cartoon of the greatest villain in the history of lobbying.

Author: Jack Abramoff

When I was a graduate student, the leading spirits at Harvard were interested in the history of ideas.

Author: M. Abrams

No people in history have ever survived who thought they could protect their freedom by making themselves inoffensive to their enemies.

Author: Dean Acheson

History provides neither compensation for suffering nor penalties for wrong.

Author: John Acton

History is not a burden on the memory but an illumination of the soul.

Author: Lord Acton

And remember, where you have a concentration of power in a few hands, all too frequently men with the mentality of gangsters get control. History has proven that.

Author: Lord Acton

We have nothing in our history or position to invite aggression; we have everything to beckon us to the cultivation of relations of peace and amity with all nations.

Author: Franklin Adams

History is the sum total of things that could have been avoided.

Author: Konrad Adenauer

History does not merely touch on language, but takes place in it.

Author: Theodor Adorno

In Thailand's history there have been dissensions from time to time, but in general, unity has prevailed.

Author: Bhumibol Adulyadej

Our dear country, Iran, throughout history has been subject to threats.

Author: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

The advent of self-government for the Iraqi people is a watershed moment in their history.

Author: Todd Akin

The institution of chivalry forms one of the most remarkable features in the history of the Middle Ages.

Author: Horatio Alger

History is a relay of revolutions.

Author: Saul Alinsky

We are living in the machine age. For the first time in history the comedian has been compelled to supply himself with jokes and comedy material to compete with the machine. Whether he knows it or not, the comedian is on a treadmill to oblivion.

Author: Fred Allen

I rise today to offer a formal and heartfelt apology to all the victims of lynching in our history, and for the failure of the United States Senate to take action when action was most needed.

Author: George Allen

You know, I think when I reflect on it, I think there's certainly a sense of history. When you have ambitions to play this game, you want to be one of the best ever, and you want to play so well and be so effective that you want people to remember your name 100 years from now.

Author: Marcus Allen

History shows that where ethics and economics come in conflict, victory is always with economics. Vested interests have never been known to have willingly divested themselves unless there was sufficient force to compel them.

Author: B. Ambedkar

Crazy Horse saw history as integrated in the present, incorporated into daily life.

Author: Stephen Ambrose

History is everything that has ever happened.

Author: Stephen Ambrose

They killed my character off and as God would have it, just when they told me I would never work again, I got cast in a little program called Roots, and as they would say, the rest is history.

Author: John Amos

I was a daydreamer, and there is a lot of history and geography and science I missed out on because I was in my head. And I regret that.

Author: Gillian Anderson

History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.

Author: Maya Angelou

More than ever before in human history, we share a common destiny. We can master it only if we face it together. And that, my friends, is why we have the United Nations.

Author: Kofi Annan

Life is a wonderful thing to talk about, or to read about in history books - but it is terrible when one has to live it.

Author: Jean Anouilh

The lovers of romance can go elsewhere for satisfaction but where can the lovers of truth turn if not to history?

Author: Katharine Anthony

Your great country is wonderful at stealing pieces of history and using it for its own purposes, so there didn't seem to be anything particularly unusual about it but the English were incredibly exercised about it.

Author: Michael Apted

It was one of those great miracles of history that they managed to smuggle an Enigma machines out to Britain just before they were invaded by the Nazis.

Author: Michael Apted

It is not I who have been consigned to the bedroom of history.

Author: Corazon Aquino

No cause is left but the most ancient of all, the one, in fact, that from the beginning of our history has determined the very existence of politics, the cause of freedom versus tyranny.

Author: Hannah Arendt

It is in the very nature of things human that every act that has once made its appearance and has been recorded in the history of mankind stays with mankind as a potentiality long after its actuality has become a thing of the past.

Author: Hannah Arendt

Then I realized my early work did have something special that audiences adored apart from what I humbly thought about them. They occupy a distinguished niche in Italian film history and probably always will.

Author: Dario Argento

Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.

Author: Aristotle

Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are rather of the nature of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.

Author: Aristotle

Developments in information technology and globalised media mean that the most powerful military in the history of the world can lose a war, not on the battlefield of dust and blood, but on the battlefield of world opinion.

Author: Timothy Ash

We released 400,000 classified documents, the most extraordinary history of a war to ever have been released in our civilization. Those documents cover 109,000 deaths. That is serious matter.

Author: Julian Assange

In the history of Wikileaks, nobody has claimed that the material being put out is not authentic.

Author: Julian Assange

The cosmical importance of this conclusion is profound and the possibilities it opens for the future very remarkable, greater in fact than any suggested before by science in the whole history of the human race.

Author: Francis Aston

You can only get really unpopular decisions through if the electorate is convinced of the value of the environment. That's what natural history programmes should be for.

Author: David Attenborough

In the old days... it was a basic, cardinal fact that producers didn't have opinions. When I was producing natural history programmes, I didn't use them as vehicles for my own opinion. They were factual programmes.

Author: David Attenborough

History is, strictly speaking, the study of questions; the study of answers belongs to anthropology and sociology.

Author: W. Auden

To write history is so difficult that most historians are forced to make concessions to the technique of legende.

Author: Erich Auerbach

Going back into the history of a word, very often into Latin, we come back pretty commonly to pictures or models of how things happen or are done.

Author: J. Austin

March 11, 2004, now occupies a place in the history of infamy.

Author: Jose Aznar

Debate and divergence of views can only enrich our history and culture.

Author: Ibrahim Babangida

With each new book, the march of our national history takes a step forward. When one is present at a book launch, one is bearing witness to the birth of a new body of ideas, to the coming into being of another testimony of history.

Author: Ibrahim Babangida

The history of our country is not the history of any other country in the world which is either practicing advanced democracy or struggling to lay the foundation for democracy.

Author: Ibrahim Babangida

To those who have chosen the profession of medicine, a knowledge of chemistry, and of some branches of natural history, and, indeed, of several other departments of science, affords useful assistance.

Author: Charles Babbage

Pearl Harbor caused our Nation to wholeheartedly commit to winning World War II, changing the course of our Nation's history and the world's future.

Author: Joe Baca

The Veteran's History Project, a nationwide volunteer effort to collect oral histories from America's war veterans, provides an avenue to do just that. Now in its fifth year, the Project has collected more than 40,000 individual stories.

Author: Spencer Bachus

Antiquities are history defaced, or some remnants of history which have casually escaped the shipwreck of time.

Author: Francis Bacon

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

Author: Walter Bagehot

Completeness? Happiness? These words don't come close to describing my emotions. There truly is nothing I can say to capture what motherhood means to me, particularly given my medical history.

Author: Anita Baker

Sweetheart, I'm the biggest ripped-off cartoonist in the history of the world, and that's all I'm going to say.

Author: Ralph Bakshi

People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.

Author: James Baldwin

American history is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful, and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it.

Author: James Baldwin

I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am also, much more than that. So are we all.

Author: James Baldwin

The making of an American begins at the point where he himself rejects all other ties, any other history, and himself adopts the vesture of his adopted land.

Author: James Baldwin

In conclusion we may say, in view of the confirmation that our study has given of the parallelism between individual and racial thought of the Self, that in the history of psychology we discern the great profile which the race has drawn on the pages of time.

Author: James Baldwin

The development of the meaning attaching to the personal self, the conscious being, is the subject matter of the history of psychology.

Author: James Baldwin

I come back to the same thing: We've got the greatest pipeline in the company's history in the next 12 months, and we've had the most amazing financial results possible over the last five years, and we're predicting being back at double-digit revenue growth in fiscal year '06.

Author: Steve Ballmer

My major allegiance has been to storytelling, not to history.

Author: Russell Banks

My other bodily ailments have become mere matters of history.

Author: William Banting

The Obama administration and the Democratic Congress have taken the biggest lurch to the left in policy in American history. There've been no - no Congress, no administration that has run this far to the left in such a small period of time. And there is a reaction to that.

Author: Haley Barbour

The Internet is the most important single development in the history of human communication since the invention of call waiting.

Author: Dave Barry

This is an exciting time. A new chapter in our history.

Author: John Barth

More history is made by secret handshakes than by battles, bills and proclamations.

Author: John Barth

Our flag honors those who have fought to protect it, and is a reminder of the sacrifice of our nation's founders and heroes. As the ultimate icon of America's storied history, the Stars and Stripes represents the very best of this nation.

Author: Joe Barton

We are people with all the hopes, dreams, passions, and faults of everyone else. Eighty percent of us are born into families with no history of dwarfism.

Author: Billy Barty

If the history of the past fifty years teaches us anything, it is that peace does not follow disarmament - disarmament follows peace.

Author: Bernard Baruch

It is, I claim, nonsense to say that it does not matter which individual man acted as the nucleus for the change. It is precisely this that makes history unpredictable into the future.

Author: Gregory Bateson

Without philosophy, history is always for me dead and dumb.

Author: Ferdinand Baur

Properly speaking, history is nothing but the crimes and misfortunes of the human race.

Author: Pierre Bayle

History has spurts and then is steady, and then maybe even backing up a step, and then forward again.

Author: Alan Bean

All the lessons of history in four sentences: Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad with power. The mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly small. The bee fertilizes the flower it robs. When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.

Author: Charles Beard

Never in the history of fashion has so little material been raised so high to reveal so much that needs to be covered so badly.

Author: Cecil Beaton

Happy is the nation without a history.

Author: Cesare Beccaria

But 18 years after the passage of the Civil Liberties Act, there still remains unfinished work to completely rectify and close this regrettable chapter in our Nation's history.

Author: Xavier Becerra

I'm pretty illiterate when it comes to comics history.

Author: Alison Bechdel

The world's battlefields have been in the heart chiefly; more heroism has been displayed in the household and the closet, than on the most memorable battlefields in history.

Author: Henry Beecher

The greatest concubines in history knew that everything revealed with nothing concealed is a bore.

Author: Geoffrey Beene

Bill and Hillary Clinton are the most investigated couple in American history - now the most thoroughly exonerated couple in American history.

Author: Paul Begala

Every major question in history is a religious question. It has more effect in molding life than nationalism or a common language.

Author: Hilaire Belloc

And History will smile to think that this is the species for which Socrates and Jesus Christ died.

Author: Julien Benda

Harrison Ford was pretty content as a carpenter who thought it would be nice to work on TV and ended up being the biggest film star in the history of cinema.

Author: Dirk Benedict

Racism is an ism to which everyone in the world today is exposed; for or against, we must take sides. And the history of the future will differ according to the decision which we make.

Author: Ruth Benedict

The life history of the individual is first and foremost an accommodation to the patterns and standards traditionally handed down in his community.

Author: Ruth Benedict

In Italy, the country where fascism was born, we have a particular relation with the Holocaust, but as a turning point in history it belongs to everybody in the world. It is a part of humanity.

Author: Roberto Benigni

Value people on their potential, not on their history.

Author: Bo Bennett

If you think Abraham Lincoln became famous for inventing the town car, it is time to spend a few hours on history.

Author: Bo Bennett

I guess if I weren't an actor, I'd be a history professor.

Author: Tom Berenger

Legend remains victorious in spite of history.

Author: Sarah Bernhardt

And religion causes most of the problems, war, and economics of course, and study your history or you're going to repeat it; and if you're burning a Harry Potter book you need some serious counseling, you don't get it, you're missing the whole point.

Author: Michael Berryman

First of all, there's no mention of political parties in the Constitution, so you begin American history with not only no political conventions but also no parties.

Author: Michael Beschloss

History is an account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools.

Author: Ambrose Bierce

The slightest acquaintance with history shows that powerful republics are the most warlike and unscrupulous of nations.

Author: Ambrose Bierce

The Communist regime didn't consider this to be a shining moment in history and assigned no heroism to it. They classified it as merely an accident.

Author: Kathryn Bigelow

In my world, history comes down to language and art. No one cares much about what battles were fought, who won them and who lost them - unless there is a painting, a play, a song or a poem that speaks of the event.

Author: Theodore Bikel

History is the great dust-heap... a pageant and not a philosophy.

Author: Augustine Birrell

The main thing is to make history, not to write it.

Author: Otto Bismarck

The source of wealth is from individuals with little or no history of interest in the game, who have happened upon football as a means of serving some hidden agenda.

Author: Sepp Blatter

The Secret Doctrine is the common property of the countless millions of men born under various climates, in times with which History refuses to deal, and to which esoteric teachings assign dates incompatible with the theories of Geology and Anthropology.

Author: H. Blavatsky

History is, in its essentials, the science of change. It knows and it teaches that it is impossible to find two events that are ever exactly alike, because the conditions from which they spring are never identical.

Author: Marc Bloch

But history is neither watchmaking nor cabinet construction. It is an endeavor toward better understanding.

Author: Marc Bloch

Yes, they broke the law, but we can't deport them. Let's get over this pointing fingers and do something about that, whether it - they have to pay a fine, learn to speak English, the history, you can do that. And then you have to give visas for the skills we need.

Author: Michael Bloomberg

It wasn't simply that Clinton created the greatest prosperity in the country's history. Or that we created 22 million new jobs, more than ever before. Under Clinton, poverty was reduced 25%.

Author: Sidney Blumenthal

It's absolutely crucial for the Democrats to have a sense of their history, of who they are, in order to be able to project their values and stand up for them.

Author: Sidney Blumenthal

It was the biggest suppression of voting rights in our country's history since Jim Crow. And the thread of race runs from the beginning to the end of my book.

Author: Sidney Blumenthal

Furthermore, the study of the present surroundings is insufficient: the history of the people, the influence of the regions through which it has passed on its migrations, and the people with whom it came into contact, must be considered.

Author: Franz Boas

Remember that in every single case in history the process of adaptation has been one of exceeding slowness. Do not look for the impossible, but do not let your path deviate from the quiet and steadfast insistence on full opportunities for your powers.

Author: Franz Boas

The study of history is the beginning of political wisdom.

Author: Jean Bodin

I made more lousy pictures than any actor in history.

Author: Humphrey Bogart

Skepticism is a virtue in history as well as in philosophy.

Author: Napoleon Bonaparte

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

Author: Napoleon Bonaparte

History is a set of lies agreed upon.

Author: Napoleon Bonaparte

What is history but a fable agreed upon?

Author: Napoleon Bonaparte

History's lesson is to make the most of reform opportunities when they arise because they do not arise often and they do not last long.

Author: Christopher Bond

We are still living in the aftershock of Hiroshima, people are still the scars of history.

Author: Edward Bond

Villa Grande has in many ways symbolized an important, but less than pleasant, part of our history.

Author: Kjell Bondevik

At many points during our nation's history, there have been times - known in our history textbooks as "panics" - when adverse conditions affecting the financial and economic sectors of the country have caused individuals to hoard more than they need.

Author: Jo Bonner

Never in our country's history have we witnessed a natural disaster that has impacted so many people in such a wide area. In fact, as of the writing of this column, millions of people along the Gulf Coast have been displaced from their homes in a period of only five days.

Author: Jo Bonner

In a sense, words are encyclopedias of ignorance because they freeze perceptions at one moment in history and then insist we continue to use these frozen perceptions when we should be doing better.

Author: Edward Bono

We're at unique point in history where the things that we are building are going to significantly impact our social, political, economical, and personal lives.

Author: Anita Borg

Man seems to insist on ignoring the lessons available from history.

Author: Norman Borlaug

I want this book to be facts, to be important, to be history.

Author: Anatoli Boukreev

Yet, history has shown that if material force can defeat some ideologies it can no longer obliterate a civilization without destabilizing the whole planet.

Author: Abdelaziz Bouteflika

Yet through history gays have always dominated religious life and churches.

Author: Malcolm Boyd

English history is all about men liking their fathers, and American history is all about men hating their fathers and trying to burn down everything they ever did.

Author: Malcolm Bradbury

The history of American politics is littered with bodies of people who took so pure a position that they had no clout at all.

Author: Benjamin Bradlee

I'm trying to make a case for those people who don't have a sense of belonging that they should have, that there is something really worthwhile in having a sense of belonging, and recasting and looking at our modern history.

Author: Billy Bragg

Everything must be recaptured and relocated in the general framework of history, so that despite the difficulties, the fundamental paradoxes and contradictions, we may respect the unity of history which is also the unity of life.

Author: Fernand Braudel

History may be divided into three movements: what moves rapidly, what moves slowly and what appears not to move at all.

Author: Fernand Braudel

All of us have a place in history. Mine is clouds.

Author: Richard Brautigan

The 2000 election exposed some ugly history in our country.

Author: Donna Brazile

This recognition of the earlier human background, now so obvious to us, did not come all at once, for the inclusion of history itself in university instruction is an event less than two centuries old.

Author: James Breasted

In the more recently disclosed field of history in the ancient Near East, however, there has been no such sense of responsibility displayed by historians either in Europe or America.

Author: James Breasted

The man who first gave history a recognized place in science was an ancient historian.

Author: James Breasted

We look to the history of the time of framing and to the intervening history of interpretation. But the ultimate question must be, what do the words of the text mean in our time.

Author: William Brennan, Jr.

Better still - your history has shown how powerful a moral catharsis expressed through popular resistance to injustice can sometimes be; I have in mind the grassroots opposition to the Vietnam War.

Author: Breyten Breytenbach

A country grows in history not only because of the heroism of its troops on the field of battle, it grows also when it turns to justice and to right for the conservation of its interests.

Author: Aristide Briand

I've always been interested in the history of the West, our country and particularly as it relates to the Native Americans - the original Americans.

Author: Beau Bridges

The worst mistake of first contact, made throughout history by individuals on both sides of every new encounter, has been the unfortunate habit of making assumptions. It often proved fatal.

Author: David Brin

Numerous politicians have seized absolute power and muzzled the press. Never in history has the press seized absolute power and muzzled the politicians.

Author: David Brinkley

The real history of consciousness starts with one's first lie.

Author: Joseph Brodsky

What I am is a thinking, feeling human being compelled by history.

Author: Avery Brooks

But, sir, they have written me down upon the history of the country as worthy of expulsion, and in no unkindness I must tell them that for all future time my self-respect requires that I shall pass them as strangers.

Author: Preston Brooks