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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:

The colonial intrusion was nothing more than an episode in the history of Africa.

Jacob Ade Ajayi

“We’re losing these really vital stories from the queer canon and these representations of LGBTQ individuals are just disappearing throughout history,”

Cheryl Dunye

Very few have a long history of curating—and some might find it uncomfortable calling themselves a curator, even though that’s what they’ve done for years

Bisi Silva

The arts and entertainment industry doesnt have a history of diversity - we are only starting to get there now

Athenkosi Kwinana

It's going to be history for us, the club and the supporters

Deon Hotto

Someone once said that history is written by the victors. He probably was not the greatest of all victors, if only because his name has been utterly forgotten.

Winston Churchill A History of the English-Speaking Peoples (1956)

Ancient histories, as one of our wits has said, are but fables that have been agreed upon.

Voltaire

History is written for the purpose of narration and not in order to give proof.

Quintilian

We Americans write our own history. And the chapters of which we're proudest are the ones where we had the courage to change.

Al Gore

"The truth is whatever people will believe is the truth. Don't you know history?"

Joseph Heller God Knows (1984)

History should remember Blair and Bush as the killers of children or as the lying prime minister and president.

Mahathir Mohamad

Friedman was a great economist, but like every other great economist in history, he was also wrong about some important things.

Paul Krugman

We don't write our history. It has always been handed down to us orally by our elders.

Miriam Makeba

At the end of day, history continues to show us that the universe isn't strange. We are.

Michael Stevens

For all his attention to my historical education, my father had neglected to tell me this: history’s terrible moments were real.

Elizabeth Kostova The Historian (2005)

This may have been the most chaotic week of what's undoubtedly the most chaotic presidency ever in the history of the United States.

Chuck Schumer Speech to the U.S. Senate (2018)

"History is often kinder to leaders who build institutions than to those who merely win elections."

Olusegun Adeniyi

It’s one thing to read about history. But it’s another to stand where it happened, to touch what remains, to make sure it isn’t forgotten.

Kate Broug

History is complicated and Gen Z reasoning is not. They think that they are pure, but they are really just simplistic.

Bill Maher

The League of Nations is the greatest humbug in history. They cannot even protect a little nation like Armenia. They do nothing but pass useless resolutions.

David Lloyd George

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