Quotes on History

There are no principles; there are only events. There is no good and bad, there are only circumstances.

Going from--toward; it is the history of every one of us.

The same political parties which now agitiate the US have existed through all time. And in fact the terms of whig and tory belong to natural as well as to civil history. They denote the temper and constitution and mind of different individuals.

History is that form which his imagination seeks comprehension of the living existence of the world in relation to his own life, which he thereby invests with a deeper reality.

Fiction is history, human history, or it is nothing.

Not to know what has been transacted in former times is to continue always a child.

Only strong personalities can endure history, the weak are extinguished by it.

Women must pay for everything. They do get more glory than men for comparable feats, but, they also get more notoriety when they crash.

Like all dreamers, I mistook disenchantment for truth.

Sanity is madness put to good use.

The theory of our modern technic shows that nothing is as practical as theory.

Personally, I would be delighted if there were a life after death, especially if it permitted me to continue to learn about this world and others, if it gave me a chance to discover how history turns out.

In this world without quiet corners, there can be no easy escapes from history, from hullabaloo, from terrible, unquiet fuss.

The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but that's the way to bet.

I see History as a relay race in which one of us, before dropping in his tracks, must carry one stage further the challenge of being a man.

Since the dawn of history, mankind has honoured and respected brave and honest people.

Without a struggle, there can be no progress.

I don’t know much about history, and I wouldn’t give a nickel for all the history in the world. It means nothing to me. History is more or less bunk. It's tradition. We don't want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker's damn is the history we make today.

Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire.

A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives.

Read no history: nothing but biography, for that is life without theory.