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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.

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Most quoted on history:

In more than one respect, the exploring of the Solar System and homesteading other worlds constitutes the beginning, much more than the end, of history.

Carl Sagan

Anachronism is still one of the most obvious faults when the unqualified (those expert in other disciplines, perhaps) attempt to do history.

Arthur Marwick

The message of medical history to the future is: "Come clean."

Fielding Hudson Garrison

History is a gallery of pictures in which there are many copies and few originals.

Alexis de Tocqueville

There really are broad patterns in history, and the search for them is as fascinating as it is productive.

Jared Diamond

According to the basic evolutionary criteria of survival and reproduction, wheat has become one of the most successful plants in the history of the earth.

Yuval Noah Harari Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2011)

The peaceful transfer of authority is rare in history, yet common in our country. With a simple oath, we affirm old traditions and make new beginnings.

George W. Bush

For people who want to question whether America has a racist history, just go back and look at the political cartoons. The history is horrible.

Matt Wuerker

Religions, which condemn the pleasures of sense, drive men to seek the pleasures of power. Throughout history power has been the vice of the ascetic.

Bertrand Russell

A century hence, 2000 may be viewed as quite a primitive period in human history. It's something to hope for.

Neil Armstrong

We are dealing with the best-educated generation in history.

Timothy Leary Interview by David Sheff in Rolling Stone Twentieth Anniversary Issue (1987)

But how many men are truly wise in their handling of women? In all history you can count them on the fingers of one thumb.

Robert A. Heinlein To Sail Beyond the Sunset (1987)

Some people would rather drown our domes in blood than learn anything from history. Or learn anything at all.

Lois McMaster Bujold Brothers in Arms (1989)

History, after all, is the record of appearances, not Reality; of doctrines, not of Silence.

Anthony de Mello One Minute Nonsense (1992)

Perhaps coming from the royal family, I had easier emotional access to a sense of Toromon’s history. Even at its best, that’s all an aristocracy is good for.

Samuel R. Delany Out of the Dead City (1963)

Revolutionary history shows that the People do not nurse their wounds. After defeat, they begin immediately planning the next step in the forward ever march.

Stokely Carmichael Black Power: The Politics of Liberation (1967)

War has been with us ever since the dawn of civilization. Nothing has been more constant in history than war.

Robert Aumann War and peace (2005)

The most compelling confirmation of Marx's theory of history is late capitalist society. There is a sense in which this case is becoming truer as time passes.

Terry Eagleton Why Marx Was Right (2011)

Psychohistory, as a science, will always be problem-centered, while history will always remain period-centered. They are simply two different tasks.

Lloyd deMause Foundations of Psychohistory (1982)

I honestly believe that history will be kinder to me than the contemporary media, or for that matter, the Opposition parties in Parliament.

Manmohan Singh

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