History is politics projected into the past.
History Quotes
The historian works with documents. There is no substitute for documents: no documents, no history.
History as a discipline can be characterized as having a collective forgetfulness about women.
History -that little sewer where man loves to wallow.
Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted, the indifference of those who should have known better, the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most, that has made it possible for evil to triumph.
If Beethoven had been killed in a plane crash at the age of 22, it would have changed the history of music – and of aviation.
There is no history of mankind, there are only many histories of all kinds of aspects of human life. And one of these is the history of political power. This is elevated into the history of the world.
There is a history in all men’s lives Figuring the nature of the times deceas’d; The which observ’d, a man may prophesy, With a near aim, of the main chance of things As yet not come to life, which in their seeds And weak beginnings lie intreasured. (Henry IV)
All history is only one long story to this effect: men have struggled for power over their fellowmen in order that they might win the joys of earth at the expense of others, and might shift the burden of life from their own shoulders upon those of others.
Things just happen, one after another. They don’t care who knows But “history” – ah, history is different. History has to be observed. Otherwise it’s not history. It’s just – well, things happening one after another.
