Motivational Quotes

History and historians

Anybody can make history. Only a great man can write it.

- Wilde, Oscar

History and historians Motivational Quotes

Best Quotes about History and historians

I love those historians that are either very simple or most excellent. Such as are between both (which is the most common fashion), it is they that spoil all; they will needs chew our meat for us and take upon them a law to judge, and by consequence to square and incline the story according to their fantasy.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

Providence conceals itself in the details of human affairs, but becomes unveiled in the generalities of history.

Lamartine, Alphonse De

However gradual the course of history, there must always be the day, even an hour and minute, when some significant action is performed for the first or last time.

Quennell, Peter

History is the devil's scripture.

Byron, Lord

The game of history is usually played by the best and the worst over the heads of the majority in the middle.

Hoffer, Eric

Might does not make right, it only makes history.

Fiebig, Jim

History is the distillation of rumor.

Carlyle, Thomas

History is just the portrayal of crimes and misfortunes.

Voltaire

History books that contain no lies are extremely dull.

France, Anatole

10.

The historian's job is to aggrandize, promoting accident to inevitability and innocuous circumstance to portent.

Conrad, Peter

11.

Human history in essence is the history of ideas.

Wells, H.G.

12.

People will not look forward to posterity who will not look backward to their ancestors.

Burke, Edmund

13.

The Thames is liquid history.

Burns, John

14.

Historian. A broad -- gauge gossip.

Bierce, Ambrose

15.

I can see only one safe rule for the historian: that he should recognize in the development of human destinies the play of the contingent and the unforeseen.

Fisher, Herbert Albert Laurens

16.

The history of mankind is his character.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

17.

The first duty of an historian is to be on guard against his own sympathies.

Froude, James A.

18.

History repeats itself. Historians repeat each other.

Guedalla, Philip

19.

Historian -- an unsuccessful novelist.

Mencken, H. L.

20.

The causes of events are ever more interesting than the events themselves.

Cicero, Marcus T.

21.

Study men, not historians.

Truman, Harry S

22.

It is humiliating to remain with our hands folded while others write history. It matters little who wins. To make a people great it is necessary to send them to battle even if you have to kick them in the pants. That is what I shall do.

Mussolini, Benito

23.

Historians desiring to write the actions of men, ought to set down the simple truth, and not say anything for love or hatred; also to choose such an opportunity for writing as it may be lawful to think what they will, and write what they think, which is a rare happiness of the time.

Raleigh, Sir Walter

24.

History, is made up of the bad actions of extraordinary men and woman. All the most noted destroyers and deceivers of our species, all the founders of arbitrary governments and false religions have been extraordinary people; and nine tenths of the calamities that have befallen the human race had no other origin than the union of high intelligence with low desires.

Macaulay, Thomas B.

25.

God cannot alter the past, but historians can.

Butler, Samuel

26.

For historians ought to be precise, truthful, and quite unprejudiced, and neither interest nor fear, hatred nor affection, should cause them to swerve from the path of truth, whose mother is history, the rival of time, the depository of great actions, the witness of what is past, the example and instruction of the present, the monitor of the future.

Cervantes, Miguel De

27.

History is a better guide than good intentions.

Kirkpatrick, Jeane

28.

And having wisdom with each studious year, in meditation dwelt, with learning wrought, and shaped his weapon with an edge severe, sapping a solemn creed with solemn sneer.

Byron, Lord

29.

The whole past is the procession of the present.

Carlyle, Thomas

30.

History is little more than the register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind.

Gibbon, Edward

31.

To believe what has not occurred in history will not occur at all, is to argue disbelief in the dignity of man.

Gandhi, Mahatma

32.

Historians are prophets with their face turned backward.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

33.

The only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history.

Hegel, Friedrich

34.

We should not look back unless it is to derive useful lessons from past errors, and for the purpose of profiting by dearly bought experience.

Washington, George

35.

From the heights of these pyramids, forty centuries look down on us.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

36.

While we read history we make history.

Curtis, George William

37.

History is nothing but a pack of tricks that we play upon the dead.

Voltaire

38.

Every library should try to be complete on something, if it were only the history of pinheads.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

39.

Until the lions have their historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunter.

Proverb, African

40.

The pyramids, attached with age, have forgotten the names of their founders.

Fuller, R. Buckminster

41.

Great abilities are not requisite for an Historian; for in historical composition, all the greatest powers of the human mind are quiescent. He has facts ready to his hand; so there is no exercise of invention. Imagination is not required in any degree; only about as much as is used in the lowest kinds of poetry. Some penetration, accuracy, and coloring, will fit a man for the task, if he can give the application which is necessary.

Johnson, Samuel

42.

Caesar had perished from the world of men, had not his sword been rescued by his pen.

Vaughan, Henry

43.

Our ignorance of history causes us to slander our own times.

Flaubert, Gustave

44.

History is but a confused heap of facts.

Chesterfield, Lord

45.

History is one of the most remarkable things in our lives. The mere fact it occurred makes it remarkable.

46.

Historians are left forever chasing shadows, painfully aware of their inability ever to reconstruct a dead world in its completeness however thorough or revealing their documentation. We are doomed to be forever hailing someone who has just gone around the corner and out of earshot.

Schama, Simon

47.

The history of the past interests us only in so far as it illuminates the history of the present.

Dimnet, Ernest

48.

Never forget the importance of history. To know nothing of what happened before you took your place on earth, is to remain a child for ever and ever.

49.

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.

Hugo, Victor

50.

More than any time in history mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness, the other to total extinction. Let us pray that we have the wisdom to choose correctly.

Allen, Woody