“Using bronze as a mirror, one can straighten one's attire; using history as a mirror, one can understand the rise and fall of nations; using people as a mirror, one can see one's own gains and losses.”
Emperor Taizong of Tang
LessonsSelf Reflection
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.
“It would be better to be without the Book of History than to give entire credit to it.”
Mencius
Critical ThinkingHistorians
“Time is endless and the earth is vast; someday, someone like me will be born who will understand my work.”
Bhavabhuti
LegacyPatience
“Men trust their ears less than their eyes.”
Herodotus
EvidenceHuman Nature
“War is a violent teacher.”
Thucydides
WarLessons
“Wealth we employ more for use than for show.”
Pericles
WealthValues
“Memory is the treasury and guardian of all things.”
Cicero
MemoryShort Quotes
“The worst crimes were dared by a few, willed by more and tolerated by all.”
Tacitus
ResponsibilityWarning
“Objects which are usually the motives of our travels by land and by sea are often overlooked and neglected if they lie under our eye.”
Pliny the Younger
Local HistoryAppreciation
“A nation's culture resides in the hearts and in the soul of its people.”
Mahatma Gandhi
CultureNation
“Time's the king of men; he's both their parent, and he is their grave.”
William Shakespeare
TimeMortality
“The earth belongs always to the living generation.”
Thomas Jefferson
GenerationsChange
“In books lies the soul of the whole Past Time.”
Thomas Carlyle
BooksPast
“Only that which has no history is definable.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
PhilosophyComplexity
“A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.”
Henry Adams
TeachersLegacy
“A page of history is worth a volume of logic.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
ExperienceLessons
“I will open my mouth in a parable: I will utter dark sayings of old.”
The Bible (Psalm 78:2)
StorytellingTradition
“Let there be a careful attention to perform the funeral rites to parents, and let them be followed when long gone with the ceremonies of sacrifice; then the virtue of the people will resume its proper excellence.”
Confucius
AncestorsTradition
“Take from the altars of the past the fire, not the ashes.”
Jean Jaures
TraditionInspiration
“Great is the power of memory.”
Saint Augustine
MemoryShort Quotes
“Let us have peace.”
Ulysses S. Grant
PeaceShort Quotes
“To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace.”
George Washington
PeaceStrategy
“War is the continuation of politics by other means.”
Carl von Clausewitz
WarPolitics
“War is delightful to those who have had no experience of it.”
Desiderius Erasmus
WarExperience
“The decline of Rome was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness.”
Edward Gibbon
EmpiresDecline