A million thanks to Steve for sharing some of his fantastic collection with me!
History is a cyclic poem written by Time upon the memories of man. ~Percy Bysshe Shelley
If you want to understand today, you have to search yesterday. ~Pearl Buck
History is philosophy teaching by examples. ~Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War
People are trapped in history, and history is trapped in them. ~James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son
The great eventful Present hides the Past; but through the din
Of its loud life hints and echoes from the life behind steal in.
~John Greenleaf Whittier
Until lions have their historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunters. ~African Proverb
The memories of men are too frail a thread to hang history from. ~John Still, The Jungle Tide
All the ancient histories, as one of our wits say, are just fables that have been agreed upon. ~Voltaire, Jeannot et Colin
Professor Johnston often said that if you didn't know history, you didn't know anything. You were a leaf that didn't know it was part of a tree. ~Michael Crichton, Timeline
We used to root for the Indians against the cavalry, because we didn't think it was fair in the history books that when the cavalry won it was a great victory, and when the Indians won it was a massacre. ~Dick Gregory
History is herstory, too. ~Author Unknown
A history in which every particular incident may be true may on the whole be false. ~Thomas Babington Macaulay
History with its flickering lamp stumbles along the trail of the past, trying to reconstruct its scenes, to revive its echoes, and kindle with pale gleams the passion of former days. ~Winston Churchill
History is a mighty dramos, enacted upon the theatre of times, with suns for lamps and eternity for a background. ~Thomas Carlyle
History is a novel for which the people is the author. ~Alfred de Vigny, Réflexions sur la Vérité dans l'Art
History is a kind of introduction to more interesting people than we can possibly meet in our restricted lives; let us not neglect the opportunity. ~Dexter Perkins
History was a trash bag of random coincidences torn open in a wind. Surely, Watt with his steam engine, Faraday with his electric motor, and Edison with his incandescent light bulb did not have it as their goal to contribute to a fuel shortage some day that would place their countries at the mercy of Arab oil. ~Joseph Heller, Good as Gold
Very few things happen at the right time, and the rest do not happen at all: the conscientious historian will correct these defects. ~Herodotus, The History of Herodotus
History: gossip well told. ~Elbert Hubbard, The Roycroft Dictionary
History is a symphony of echoes heard and unheard. It is a poem with events as verses. ~Charles Angoff
If one could make alive again for other people some cobwebbed skein of old dead intrigues and breathe breath and character into dead names and stiff portraits. That is history to me! ~George Macaulay Trevelyan
The history of the world is the record of a man in quest of his daily bread and butter. ~Hendrik Wilhelm van Loon, The Story of Mankind
Historians are gossips who tease the dead. ~Voltaire, Scribbling Books
History is filled with the sound of silken slippers going downstairs and wooden shoes coming up. ~Voltaire
We are the prisoners of history. Or are we? ~Robert Penn Warren, Segregation
History never looks like history when you are living through it. ~John W. Gardner
Legend: A lie that has attained the dignity of age. ~H.L. Mencken
God cannot alter the past, though historians can. ~Samuel Butler, "Prose Observations"
History is the sum total of the things that could have been avoided. ~Konrad Adenauer
Oh, God. The Sixties are coming back. Well I've got a 12-gauge double-barreled duck gun chambered for three-inch Magnum shells. And - speaking strictly for this retired hippie and former pinko beatnik - if the Sixties head my way, they won't get past the porch steps. They will be history. Which, for chrissakes, is what they're supposed to be. ~P.J. O'Rourke
The very ink with which all history is written is merely fluid prejudice. ~Mark Twain, Following the Equator
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