quotations about history
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"
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
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
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
History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors and issues.
T.S. ELIOT
Gerontion
Sometimes ... history needs a push.
VLADIMIR LENIN
attributed, Seeds of Revolution: A Collection of Axioms
Every moment happens twice: inside and outside, and they are two different histories.
ZADIE SMITH
White Teeth
The nature of this melancholy becomes clearer, once one asks the question, with whom does the historical writer of historicism actually empathize. The answer is irrefutably with the victor. Those who currently rule are however the heirs of all those who have ever been victorious. Empathy with the victors thus comes to benefit the current rulers every time.
WALTER BENJAMIN
Theses on the Philosophy of History
History. The more of it you have the more you have to live it. After a little while there gets to be too much of it to memorize and maybe that's when empires start to decline.
JOHN UPDIKE
Rabbit is Rich
Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.
KARL MARX
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
Nothing has really happened until it has been recorded.
VIRGINIA WOOLF
What would happen if history could be rewritten as casually as erasing a blackboard? Our past would be like the shifting sands at the seashore, constantly blown this way or that by the slightest breeze. History would be constantly changing every time someone spun the dial of a time machine and blundered his or her way into the past. History, as we know it, would be impossible. It would cease to exist.
MICHIO KAKU
Hyperspace
Now, history is made, not by abstract individuals, but by acting, living and passing individuals. Abstractions advance only when borne forward by real men.
MIKHAIL BAKUNIN
God and the State
What is history after all? History is facts which become lies in the end.
JEAN COCTEAU
The Observer, Sep. 22, 1957
Of all our studies, history is best qualified to reward our research. And when you see that you've got problems, all you have to do is examine the historic method used all over the world by others who have problems similar to yours. And once you see how they got theirs straight, then you know how you can get yours straight.
MALCOLM X
Message to the Grass Roots, Nov. 10, 1963
I don't believe ... that history repeats itself. There is no cycle. History is permanently doing the same thing. Sometimes we don't notice what's going on, that's all--and sometimes we have no choice but to see.
MICHAEL MARSHALL
Blood of Angels
Myths ... collected like barnacles on history, obscuring the truth.
BRIAN HERBERT & KEVIN J. ANDERSON
Dune: House Harkonnen
Longing on a large scale is what makes history.
DON DELILLO
Underworld
History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.
MAYA ANGELOU
On the Pulse of the Morning
He too, it seemed, had come to believe that he could somehow escape history. That it was possible, and even desirable, to live in a perpetual present.
CHRIS ABANI
The Secret History of Las Vegas