Quotes about History

History, like beauty, depends largely on the beholder, so when you read that, for example, David Livingstone discovered the Victoria Falls, you might be forgiven for thinking that there was nobody around the Falls until Livingstone arrived on the scene.

If there are two definitive features of ancient Greek civilization, they are loquacity and competition.

The distinction between historian and poet is not in the one writing prose and the other verse — you might put the work of Herodotus into verse, and it would still be a species of history; it consists really in this, that the one describes the thing that has been, and the other a kind of thing that might be. Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are of the nature rather of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.

There is nothing new under the sun. It has been done before.

From within he produced a crumpled piece of paper, and old-fashioned brass key, a peg of wood with a ball of string attached to it, and three rusty old disks of metal.

A nation that forgets its past has no future

My administration will be more supportive of the good works done here than any administration in the history of this country because I understand the power of faith, that faith can change lives.

At the present moment in world history nearly every nation must choose between alternative ways of life. The choice is too often not a free one.

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." (George Santayana)I've got news for Mr. Santayana: we're doomed to repeat the past no matter what. That's what it is to be alive.

I find great happiness in my relationships with old friends, living mirrors that reflect histories of laughter and sorrow, triumphs and failures, births and deaths, on both sides.

Time will run back and fetch the Age of Gold.

None of us may ever know the true effects of our prayers this side of death. But we do know this: History belongs to the intercessors.