“We secure our friends not by accepting favours but by doing them.”
Thucydides
FriendshipDiplomacy
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.
“We do not copy our neighbours, but are an example to them.”
Pericles
LeadershipDemocracy
“Consider the past; such great changes of political supremacies. Thou mayest foresee also the things which will be.”
Marcus Aurelius
PowerFuture
“Without justice, what are kingdoms but great robberies?”
Saint Augustine
JusticePower
“Time shall unfold what plighted cunning hides.”
William Shakespeare
TruthTime
“Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.”
Benjamin Franklin
LegacyAction
“All that is human must retrograde if it does not advance.”
Edward Gibbon
ProgressChange
“The best thing which we derive from history is the enthusiasm that it raises in us.”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
InspirationLearning
“Man is explicable by nothing less than all his history.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Human NatureUnderstanding
“It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.”
Henry James
LiteratureCulture
“The history of the world is the history of a few men who had faith in themselves.”
Swami Vivekananda
Self BeliefGreat People
“A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new.”
Jawaharlal Nehru
IndiaNew Beginnings
“Times change, and so the ways of dealing with them must change.”
Han Feizi
ChangeAdaptability
“Not everything is good simply because it is old, nor is a new work to be blamed because it is new.”
Kalidasa
TraditionOpen Mind
“Time is the moving image of eternity.”
Plato
TimeEternity
“Time crumbles things; everything grows old under the power of time and is forgotten through the lapse of time.”
Aristotle
TimeMemory
“The iniquity of oblivion blindly scattereth her poppy.”
Thomas Browne
ForgottenMemory
“History, with all her volumes vast, hath but one page.”
Lord Byron
PatternsPoetry
“But thou, O Lord, shalt endure for ever; and thy remembrance unto all generations.”
The Bible (Psalm 102:12)
EternityRemembrance
“Remember his marvellous works that he hath done, his wonders, and the judgments of his mouth.”
The Bible (1 Chronicles 16:12)
RemembranceFaith
“There is no witness so terrible and no accuser so powerful as conscience that dwells within us.”
Polybius
ConscienceTruth
“Circumstances rule men; men do not rule circumstances.”
Herodotus
FateHuman Nature
“We can endure neither our vices nor their remedies.”
Livy
RomeHuman Nature
“Rome was not built in a day.”
Medieval Proverb
PatienceShort Quotes
“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
SocietyClass