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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:

Sadly, after years of study, I realize that most history may pivot on personal considerations like that, not on the pursuit of ideals dark or shining.

Glen Cook Water Sleeps (1999)

This is the best few tens of billions years in the history of the universe to do cosmology.

Nima Arkani-Hamed

The study of history lies at the foundation of all sound military conclusions and practice.

Alfred Thayer Mahan

You can only picture the future based on what you know about the past. If history dies the future can only be hideous.

Jack Cady Kilroy Was Here (1996)

Whoever controls the Snake Island, controls the course of world history.

Aleksandr Dugin

Studies of thought and modes of reasoning have been central in the history of anthropology from the nineteenth century to the present day.

Thomas Hylland Eriksen What is Anthropology? (2017)

"History shows that voting is the sword that cuts through all injustice."

Jerome Foster II

The name 'Africa' evokes a multiplicity of places, experiences, and histories rather than a single reality.

Achille Mbembe

People know my work, they know specifics about it, a lot of them know the history about it, as an artist that’s the coolest thing ever.

Tim Jacobus

History is a continuous chain of events, the present is only an extension of the past.

Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan

2010 and 2011 are decisive years for Sudan's history. I am convinced that there is concrete hope for peace.

Leo Boccardi

I think there is a genetic factor involved [...] If there is a history of alcoholism in your family, watch it.

Mercedes McCambridge

Africans must take the lead in writing their own history and promote their heritage rather than waiting for foreigners to do it for them.

Julienne Uwacu

If only the Church had the sense to allow so many different and seemingly contradictory approaches to God, how much saner its history would have been!

Robert Charles Zaehner also Quoted and attributed in Londhe, S (2008)

In the face of the history of the human race what can be more silly or ridiculous than likes or dislikes founded upon race or religion?

Abraham Flexner

Take a walk through the streets and market places of Petrograd and you can really see that every stone is a piece of Russian revolutionary history.

Grigory Zinoviev The Cradle of the Revolution (1919)

The statement of a certain number of clichés borrowed from colonial ethnology, which contribute to a denial of the existence of an African history.

Adame Ba Konaré

I am inviting you to come together and stand on the right side of history by investing more in young rural people, and the communities where they live.

Sherrie Silver

I was the first female swimmer in the country’s history.

Magdalena Moshi

One of the biggest corporate lies in history, up there with selling terrible mortgages.

Nicky Wire

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