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History Quotes

Carlyle leads by count, with Yuval Noah Harari, Will Durant and Isaac Asimov close behind. The sourced picks include Karl Popper’s claim in The Open Society (1945) that there is no history of mankind, only many histories of aspects of human life, and Oscar Wilde’s line from 1891 that anybody can make history but only a great man can write it.

The Churchill line “History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it” is flagged as misattributed. What the notes give is his House of Commons speech of 23 January 1948, in which he proposed to leave the past to history, especially as he intended to write that history. A line on Anglo-Irish history credited to Shaw is flagged too, and the notes record the more common, punchier version of it.

Random quote on History

Most quoted on history:

Difficulty is the excuse history never accepts.

Edward R. Murrow

An archaeology group that hadn’t publicized one of the greatest finds in the history of the field was probably not to be trusted.

Gillian Anderson A Dream of Ice (2015)

The spiritual history of the Sixties has yet to be written.

Camille Paglia Sex, Art and American Culture : New Essays (1992)

History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation.

Julian Barnes The Sense of an Ending (2011)

Few men in our history have ever obtained the Presidency by planning to obtain it.

James A. Garfield

Unhappily, common sense has no recorded history.

Jacob Bronowski The Common Sense of Science (1951)

All the great conspiracies of history have been bizarre, usually because of the incompetence of the leading conspirators.

Tom Holt Who's Afraid of Beowulf? (1988)

Unaware of history's higher significance, I slumbered through the bliss of infancy, feeling no impulse whatever to make something of myself.

Russell Baker Growing Up (1982)

For the first time in history at Question Time, all three parties are represented by a stand-in for the real leader.

William Hague

The history of philosophical system is the picture gallery of reason.

Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach Towards a Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy (1839)

It's impossible to write the history of freedom in this country without telling how trade unions have contributed to it.

Michael Foot

Nothing Ireland—north, south, east, and west—has suffered so much in its history as the broken pledges of British statesmen.

Edward Carson

History works itself out by an inevitable internal logic.

Terry Eagleton Why Marx Was Right (2011)

The artists is responsible for his history and his nature, his history is part of his nature.

Ad Reinhardt

However, in their centuries-long history the Poles were never able to create such an organization that could be called a state.

Heinrich Himmler

“Some of us prefer history to legends, lady,” DeWar said heavily, “and sometimes everybody can be wrong.”

Iain Banks Inversions (1998)

Destiny and history are untidy.

Djuna Barnes Nightwood (1936)

Our history is responsible for the differences in the South African way of life.

P. W. Botha

History can predict nothing except that great changes in human relationships will never come about in the form in which they have been anticipated.

Johan Huizinga In the Shadow of Tomorrow (1936)

In America journalism is apt to be regarded as an extension of history: in Britain, as an extension of conversation.

Anthony Sampson Anatomy of Britain Today (1965)

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