History Quotes

What is history but the obituary of nations?

They that would know what shall be must consider what hath been.

What is public history but a register of the successes and disappointments, the vices, the follies and the quarrels of those who engage in contention for power.

The world’s history is constant, like the laws of nature, and simple, like the souls of men. The same conditions continually produce the same results.

Every man is a history of the world to himself.

History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies.

The whole course of human history may depend on a change of heart in one solitary and even humble individual – for it is in the solitary mind and soul of the individual that the battle between good and evil is waged and ultimately won or lost.

The man who sees two or three generations is like someone who sits in a conjurer’s booth at a fair and sees the tricks two or three times. They are meant to be seen only once.

The first qualification for a historian is to have no ability to invent.

Historians are like deaf people who go on answering questions that no one has asked them.