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Our only fault as mankind is that we are prone to repeating our mistakes, and these history quotes will open your eyes to stories of generations past.
Our history has a big impact on us and understanding it can benefit us in many different ways. For you to understand how and why our present world is the way it is, you have to look to history for answers.
Having knowledge of our history allows us to understand where we are coming from, which in turn allows us to understand our present. It not only reveals the past, but it also helps us create a better future.
An understanding of the successes and failures of the past is important if we are to grow and make progress going forward. If we do not learn from our past mistakes, we are bound to repeat them.
When you have knowledge of history, you’ll be able to make more sense of the current world. Studying past economic and cultural trends can help you predict what will happen next in today’s world. It can also allow you to understand why some rules exist in today’s world.
To open your eyes to stories of the past, below is our collection of inspirational, wise, and helpful history quotes, history sayings, and history proverbs, collected from a variety of sources over the years
History Quotes
- People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them. ― James Baldwin
- A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots. ― Marcus Garvey
- History will be kind to me for I intend to write it. ― Winston S. Churchill
- History is who we are and why we are the way we are. ― David McCullough
- Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is God’s gift, that’s why we call it the present. ― Joan Rivers
- If you don’t know history, then you don’t know anything. You are a leaf that doesn’t know it is part of a tree. ― Michael Crichton
I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am also, much more than that. So are we all. ― James Baldwin
A library is the delivery room for the birth of ideas, a place where history comes to life. ― Norman Cousins
History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme. ― Mark Twain
A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history. ― Mahatma Gandhi
Neither a wise man nor a brave man lies down on the tracks of history to wait for the train of the future to run over him. ― Dwight D. Eisenhower
People have an annoying habit of remembering things they shouldn’t. ― Christopher Paolini
Revolutions are the locomotives of history. ― Karl Marx
Success in creating AI would be the biggest event in human history. Unfortunately, it might also be the last, unless we learn how to avoid the risks. ― Stephen Hawking
Every moment happens twice: inside and outside, and they are two different histories. ― Zadie Smith
Blood alone moves the wheels of history. ― Martin Luther
Posterity! You will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom! I hope you will make a good use of it. ― John Adams
History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake. ― James Joyce
What is history? An echo of the past in the future; a reflex from the future on the past. ― Victor Hugo
History is a set of lies agreed upon. ― Napoleon Bonaparte
I do not speak Hebrew, but I understand that it has no word for ‘history’. The closest word for it is memory. ― David Miliband
History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again. ― Maya Angelou
Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it. ― Edmund Burke
Fear not for the future, weep not for the past. ― Percy Bysshe Shelley
The history of innovation is the story of ideas that seemed dumb at the time. ― Andy Dunn
History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation. ― Julian Barnes
History is merely a list of surprises. It can only prepare us to be surprised yet again. ― Kurt Vonnegut
The library is the temple of learning, and learning has liberated more people than all the wars in history. ― Carl T. Rowan
History is written by the victors. ― Walter Benjamin
Anybody can make history. Only a great man can write it. ― Oscar Wilde
The very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world. Lies will pass into history. ― George Orwell
History is written by the winners. ― Napoleon Bonaparte
I can’t change history; I don’t want to change history. I can only change the future. I’m working on that. ― Boris Becker
The American flag is the symbol of our freedom, national pride and history. ― Mike Fitzpatrick
History is a wheel, for the nature of man is fundamentally unchanging. What has happened before will perforce happen again. ― George R.R. Martin
History is mostly guessing; the rest is prejudice. ― Will Durant
History will decide if I’m a villain or a hero. ― Harlan Ellison
Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor. ― Robert A. Heinlein
History is a relay of revolutions. ― Saul Alinsky
The kitchen is the heart of every home, for the most part. It evokes memories of your family history. ― Debi Mazar
Study history, study history. In history lies all the secrets of statecraft. ― Winston Churchill
Neither the life of an individual nor the history of a society can be understood without understanding both. ― C. Wright Mills
You may write me down in history with your bitter, twisted lines. You may trod me in the very dirt, but still, like dust, I’ll rise. ― Maya Angelou
History never looks like history when you are living through it. ― John W. Gardner
The past changes a little every time we retell it. ― Hilary Mantel
History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce. ― Karl Marx
Be honest. We have the science, the technology, and the wealth. What we don’t have is the will, and that’s not a reason that history will accept. ― Bono
The problem is that my generation was pacified into believing that racism existed only in our history books. ― Chance The Rapper
History has demonstrated that the most notable winners usually encountered heartbreaking obstacles before they triumphed. They won because they refused to become discouraged by their defeats. ― B. C. Forbes
History repeats itself. So you might wanna pay attention. ― Quavo
History is a relentless master. It has no present, only the past rushing into the future. To try to hold fast is to be swept aside. ― John F. Kennedy
The best prophet of the future is the past. ― Lord Byron
Life moves fast. As much as you can, learn from your history, you have to move forward. ― Eddie Vedder
No great man lives in vain. The history of the world is but the biography of great men. ― Thomas Carlyle
History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies. ― Alexis de Tocqueville
Human history in essence is the history of ideas. ― H. G. Wells
History never really says goodbye. History says, ‘See you later.’― Eduardo Galeano
Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe. ― H. G. Wells
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. ― Henry Ford
The people, and the people alone, are the motive force in the making of world history. ― Mao Zedong
History is the sum total of things that could have been avoided. ― Konrad Adenauer
To study history means submitting to chaos and nevertheless retaining faith in order and meaning. ― Hermann Hesse
A people without a positive history is like a vehicle without an engine. ― Steven Biko
History is a cyclic poem written by time upon the memories of man. ― Percy Bysshe Shelley
History is not a burden on the memory but an illumination of the soul. ― Lord Acton
The idea that women were oppressed throughout history is an appalling theory. ― Jordan Peterson
History is a pack of lies about events that never happened told by people who weren’t there. ― George Santayana
Without words, without writing and without books there would be no history, there could be no concept of humanity. ― Hermann Hesse
I know of no time in human history where ignorance was better than knowledge. ― Neil deGrasse Tyson
You have to look at history as an evolution of society. ― Jean Chretien
The history of all previous societies has been the history of class struggles. ― Karl Marx
Fascism is a religion. The twentieth century will be known in history as the century of Fascism. ― Benito Mussolini
History is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind. ― Edward Gibbon
History does nothing; it does not possess immense riches; it does not fight battles. It is men, real, living, who do all this. ― Karl Marx
The more you know of your history, the more liberated you are. ― Maya Angelou
If you want to understand today, you have to search yesterday. ― Pearl Buck
The historic ascent of humanity, taken as a whole, may be summarized as a succession of victories of consciousness over blind forces – in nature, in society, in man himself. ― Leon Trotsky
There are great legends and great fighters in the history of Mexico, and there will be more to come. ― Canelo Alvarez
History is a novel for which the people is the author. ― Alfred de Vigny
History of the world is the biography of the great man. And I said: The great man always acts like a thunder. He storms the skies, while others are waiting to be stormed. ― Thomas Carlyle
History is a vast early warning system. ― Norman Cousins
History: gossip well told. ― Elbert Hubbard
Psychology keeps trying to vindicate human nature. History keeps undermining the effort. ― Mason Cooley
I love history… everything is inspired by history, so that’s why I love vintage and antiques. ― Kelly Wearstler
History is filled with the sound of silken slippers going downstairs and wooden shoes coming up. ― Voltaire
Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history. ― Abraham Lincoln
History is dependent on the new generation to write a new chapter. ― LaMelo Ball
History does not unfold: it piles up. ― Robert M. Adams
Thank you for coming. We’re gonna make some history together today. ― Steve Jobs
It is remarkable how closely the history of the apple tree is connected with that of man. ― Henry David Thoreau
History, as long as it continues to happen, is always another chance. ― R. Jackson Wilson
The man who has no sense of history, is like a man who has no ears or eyes. ― Adolf Hitler
My favorite finds are often antique pieces with a history. ― Alice Temperley
History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. History is who we are and why we are the way we are. ― David McCullough
Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular. ― Aristotle
Time will inevitably uncover dishonesty and lies; history has no place for them. ― Norodom Sihanouk
We learn from history that we don’t learn from history! ― Desmond Tutu
History is a people’s memory, and without a memory, man is demoted to the lower animals. ― Malcolm X
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. ― George Santayana
History is merely gossip. ― Oscar Wilde
History isn’t about dates and places and wars. It’s about the people who fill the spaces between them. ― Jodi Picoult
Condemn me, it does not matter, history will absolve me. ― Fidel Castro
Garbage is the part of your history you don’t want your family to know about. ― Vik Muniz
Never doubt that you can change history. You already have. ― Marge Piercy
History shows that there are no invincible armies. ― Joseph Stalin
You learn about equality in history and civics, but you find out life is not really like that. ― Arthur Ashe
A generation which ignores history has no past – and no future. ― Robert A. Heinlein
Sometimes history takes things into its own hands. ― Thurgood Marshall
The history of the past is but one long struggle upward to equality. ― Elizabeth Cady Stanton
We are not makers of history. We are made by history. ― Martin Luther King, Jr.
Every true history must force us to remember that the past was once as real as the present and as uncertain as the future. ― George Macaulay Trevelyan
History is the discipline closest to life; and life is rarely free of contradictions. ― Karl J. Weintraub
History is like a bloodstain that keeps on showing on the wall no matter how many new owners take possession, no matter how many times we paint over it. ― Peter Carey
We cannot escape history. ― Abraham Lincoln
The game of history is usually played by the best and the worst over the heads of the majority in the middle. ― Eric Hoffer
Our ignorance of history causes us to slander our own times. ― Gustave Flaubert
