“World history is the world's court of judgment.”
Friedrich Schiller
JudgementJustice
History Quotes
200 FAMOUS QUOTES · HISTORY
History Quotes
Read the best history quotes on the past, memory and lessons for the future from Cicero, Herodotus, Thucydides, Kalhana, Ibn Khaldun, Lincoln, Nehru and more.
“He who cannot draw on three thousand years is living from hand to mouth.”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
LearningWisdom
“The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk.”
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
HindsightPhilosophy
“History has had assigned to it the office of judging the past; this work aspires only to show what actually happened.”
Leopold von Ranke
TruthHistorians
“History is the essence of innumerable biographies.”
Thomas Carlyle
BiographyPeople
“There is properly no history; only biography.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
BiographyShort Quotes
“A people which takes no pride in the noble achievements of remote ancestors will never achieve anything worthy to be remembered with pride by remote descendants.”
Thomas Babington Macaulay
HeritagePride
“Study problems in preference to periods.”
Lord Acton
LearningHistorians
“Read no history: nothing but biography, for that is life without theory.”
Benjamin Disraeli
BiographyReading
“History would be an excellent thing if only it were true.”
Leo Tolstoy
ScepticalFunny
“History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.”
Karl Marx
PatternsRepetition
“History, in general, only informs us what bad government is.”
Thomas Jefferson
GovernmentLessons
“Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history.”
Abraham Lincoln
ResponsibilityLegacy
“The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.”
Abraham Lincoln
SacrificeMemory
“We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and the future.”
Frederick Douglass
LessonsFuture
“The very ink with which all history is written is merely fluid prejudice.”
Mark Twain
BiasFunny
“The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it.”
Oscar Wilde
PerspectiveFunny
“We learn from history that we learn nothing from history.”
George Bernard Shaw
LessonsIrony
“History is more or less bunk.”
Henry Ford
ScepticalFunny
“History is almost always written by the victors and conquerors and gives their viewpoint.”
Jawaharlal Nehru
BiasPerspective
“Each nation has a destiny to fulfil, each nation has a message to deliver, each nation has a mission to accomplish.”
Swami Vivekananda
NationsPurpose
“Remember the days of old, consider the years of many generations: ask thy father, and he will shew thee; thy elders, and they will tell thee.”
The Bible (Deuteronomy 32:7)
EldersMemory
“For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning.”
The Bible (Romans 15:4)
LearningFaith
“We have heard with our ears, O God, our fathers have told us, what work thou didst in their days, in the times of old.”
The Bible (Psalm 44:1)
TraditionFaith
“And these stones shall be for a memorial unto the children of Israel for ever.”
The Bible (Joshua 4:7)
MemorialsRemembrance