quotations about history
History viewed from the inside is always a dark, digestive mess, far different from the easily recognizable cow viewed from afar by historians.
DAN SIMMONS
Hyperion
Myths ... collected like barnacles on history, obscuring the truth.
BRIAN HERBERT & KEVIN J. ANDERSON
Dune: House Harkonnen
It is sometimes very hard to tell the difference between history and the smell of skunk.
REBECCA WEST
Black Lamb and Grey Falcon
Each day is a little bit of history.
JOSé SARAMAGO
Baltasar and Blimunda
There are singular moments in history, dates that divide all that goes before from all that comes after.
GEORGE H. W. BUSH
State of the Union Address, Jan. 31, 1990
The historian's task is to present what actually happened. The more purely and completely he achieves this, the more perfectly has he solved this problem. A simple presentation is at the same time the primary indispensable condition of his work and the highest achievement he will be able to attain. Regarded in this way, he seems to be merely receptive and productive, not active and creative.
WILHELM VON HUMBOLDT
"The Historian's Task"
Men are not the causers of history. History itself, by a pressure of events, causes men to resort to particular actions.
TANITH LEE
The Gods are Thirsty
The ideal historian goes to the mouth of the tomb, cries: "Lazarus, come forth!" and sets him that was dead for ages, blinking and passionate, in the sun.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
History, again, tells us of successive civilizations which have been born, have for a space thriven exceedingly, and have then miserably perished.
ARTHUR BALFOUR
Essays and Addresses
History is a struggle between the "old" right that intended to be just and the "new" that promises to be.
REINHARD BENDIX
Truth and Ideology
History is written by the victors, but it's victims who write the memoirs.
CAROL TAVRIS & ELLIOT ARONSON
Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me)
History is a vast dust-heap of falsehood with a few pennies of truth scattered through it.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
History is only time furnished with dates and rich with events.
RIVAROL
attributed, Day's Collacon
History is not fable agreed upon, but truth disagreed upon.
IVAN PANIN
Thoughts
History is not melodrama, even if it usually reads like that. It was real blood, not tomato catsup or the pale ectoplasm of statistics, that wet the ground at Bloody Angle and darkened the waters of Bloody Pond. It modifies our complacency to look at the blurred and harrowing old photographs -- the body of the dead sharpshooter in the Devil's Den at Gettysburg or the tangled mass in the Bloody Lane at Antietam.
ROBERT PENN WARREN
The Legacy of the Civil War
Sometimes ... history needs a push.
VLADIMIR LENIN
attributed, Seeds of Revolution: A Collection of Axioms
Good history is a good foundation for a better present and future.
JOHN HOPE FRANKLIN
preface, Race and History: Selected Essays 1938-1988
The more we know of history, the less shall we esteem the subjects of it.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
Each moment in history is a fleeting time, precious and unique. But some stand out as moments of beginning, in which courses are set that shape decades or centuries.
RICHARD NIXON
Inaugural Address, Jan. 20, 1969
People are absolutely haunted by [history]. You can see it at the swap meets.
PAMELA LANSDEN
"It's Monterey, Jack", Los Angeles Times, April 7, 1997