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History is a pageant, not a philosophy.

— Augustine Birrell

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Wikiquote does not flag this quote as disputed or misattributed.

Source: Obiter Dicta, The Muse of History.
Source quality: Weak source Only a web link, a social media post, or a bare page number with no work named.

More by Augustine Birrell

As certain as the Correggiosity of Correggio.

There were no books in Eden, and there will be none in heaven.

In the Name of the Bodleian, and Other Essays (1905)

That great dust-heap called ‘history’.

It can never be wrong to give pleasure.

In the Name of the Bodleian, and Other Essays (1905)

Oh, those scoundrelly Charity Commissioners! […] By the side of these anthropoid apes, the genuine bookworm, the paper-eating insect, ravenous as he once was, has done comparatively little mischief.

In the Name of the Bodleian, and Other Essays (1905)

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History

More quotes by Augustine Birrell

One whom it is easier to hate, but still easier to quote—Alexander Pope.

Alexander Pope; in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922)

There are no habits of man more alien to the doctrine of the Communist than those of the collector.

In the Name of the Bodleian, and Other Essays (1905)

It is pleasant to be admitted into the birth-chamber of a great idea destined to be translated into action.

In the Name of the Bodleian, and Other Essays (1905)

Personally, I am dead against the burning of books.

In the Name of the Bodleian, and Other Essays (1905)

Great is bookishness and the charm of books.

In the Name of the Bodleian, and Other Essays (1905)

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A generation which ignores history has no past —and no future.

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History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.

James Joyce Ulysses (1922)

If we don’t care about our past we can’t have very much hope for our future.

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past, — so good night!

Thomas Jefferson

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Augustine Birrell (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.