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.
Television is like history: there are those who make it and those who suffer it.
Without identity, we are an object of history, an instrument used by others: a utensil.
Museums must confront the histories through which their collections were assembled.
I have this fascination to be on the cutting edge of history [and] witness history firsthand.
The way I remember things, the unreliable narratives, are part of oral history.
Circumstances led me to discover passion for the history and statistics of global football.
Nigeria has a rich and diverse culture, with so many stories and histories that often go untold.
Annexing of the land in Crimea, I think, was a criminal act. But it has a history.