HISTORY QUOTATIONS
A number of often repeated adages, canards, clichés, maxims, quips, truisms, witticisms and other sayings accompany the reading, study and practice of history. Historians and history students, as well as others, often misquote or even misrepresent these sayings, and more often than not such quotations are offered without attribution.
Following is a list of some of these aphorisms along with citation.
[T]here is always a well-known solution to every human problem --- neat, plausible, and wrong.
- H. L. Mencken, Prejudices: Second Series, (New York: A. A. Knopf, 1920), 158.
Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.
- Thomas Paine, Common Sense, Ch. 1 (1776).
The principal office of history I take to be this: to prevent virtuous actions from being forgotten, and that evil words and deeds should fear an infamous reputation with posterity. [Lat., Praecipium munus annalium reor, ne virtutes sileantur, utque pravis dictis, factisque ex posteritate et infamia metus sit.]
- Tacitus (Caius Cornelius), Annales [The Histories]. Vol. III:, Sec. 65.
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
- George Santayana, The Life of Reason, Vol. 1, Ch. 12.
History is philosophy learned from examples.
- Attributed to Thucydides by Dionysius of Heraclea, Ars Rhetorica, Vol. XI, Sec. 2
The contact with manners then is education; and this Thucydides appears to assert when he says history is philosophy learned from examples.
- Dionysius of Heraclea, Ars Rhetorica, Vol. XI, Sec. 2.
History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives.
- Speech by Abba Eban, December 16, 1970, London, England.
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
- Lord Acton (John Emerich Edward Dalberg, 1st Baron Acton), Letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton, April 3, 1887.
Not to know what has been transacted in former times is to continue always a child.
- Cicero
History teaches us that the great revolutions aren’t started by people who are utterly down and out, without hope and vision. They take place when people begin to live a little better—and when they see how much yet remains to be achieved.
- Speech by Hubert H. Humphrey, April 2, 1966, Durham, N.C.
Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.
- Herbert George Wells, The Outline of History, Vol. 2, Ch. 41 (1920).
History has shown that the less people read, the more books they buy.
- Jonas’ father, in “Jonas, or The Artist at Work,” from Albert Camus, L'exil et le royaume, nouvelles. [Exile and the Kingdom] (Paris: Gallimard, 1957), 105.
Social history might be defined negatively as the history of a people with the politics left out.
- George Macaulay Trevelyan, English Social History, (Introduction), (1942).
- H. L. Mencken, Prejudices: Second Series, (New York: A. A. Knopf, 1920), 158.
Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.
- Thomas Paine, Common Sense, Ch. 1 (1776).
The principal office of history I take to be this: to prevent virtuous actions from being forgotten, and that evil words and deeds should fear an infamous reputation with posterity. [Lat., Praecipium munus annalium reor, ne virtutes sileantur, utque pravis dictis, factisque ex posteritate et infamia metus sit.]
- Tacitus (Caius Cornelius), Annales [The Histories]. Vol. III:, Sec. 65.
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
- George Santayana, The Life of Reason, Vol. 1, Ch. 12.
History is philosophy learned from examples.
- Attributed to Thucydides by Dionysius of Heraclea, Ars Rhetorica, Vol. XI, Sec. 2
The contact with manners then is education; and this Thucydides appears to assert when he says history is philosophy learned from examples.
- Dionysius of Heraclea, Ars Rhetorica, Vol. XI, Sec. 2.
History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives.
- Speech by Abba Eban, December 16, 1970, London, England.
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
- Lord Acton (John Emerich Edward Dalberg, 1st Baron Acton), Letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton, April 3, 1887.
Not to know what has been transacted in former times is to continue always a child.
- Cicero
History teaches us that the great revolutions aren’t started by people who are utterly down and out, without hope and vision. They take place when people begin to live a little better—and when they see how much yet remains to be achieved.
- Speech by Hubert H. Humphrey, April 2, 1966, Durham, N.C.
Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.
- Herbert George Wells, The Outline of History, Vol. 2, Ch. 41 (1920).
History has shown that the less people read, the more books they buy.
- Jonas’ father, in “Jonas, or The Artist at Work,” from Albert Camus, L'exil et le royaume, nouvelles. [Exile and the Kingdom] (Paris: Gallimard, 1957), 105.
Social history might be defined negatively as the history of a people with the politics left out.
- George Macaulay Trevelyan, English Social History, (Introduction), (1942).
The following quotes are often cited, but still require indisputable attribution:
Any man under 30 who is not a liberal has no heart, and any man over 30 who is not a conservative has no brains.
- Winston Churchill
What do I think of Western civilization? I think it would be a very good idea.
- Mohandas K. Gandhi
History is past politics, and politics present history.
- Sir John Robert Seelay
A favorite quote:
History cannot, like physical science, deduce causal laws of general application. All attempts have failed to discover laws of “cause and effect” which are certain to repeat themselves in the institutions and affairs of men. The law of gravitation may be scientifically proved because it is universal and simple. But the historical law that starvation brings on revolt is not proved; indeed the opposite statement, that starvation leads to abject submission, is equally true in the light of past events. You cannot so completely isolate any historical event from its circumstances as to be able to deduce from it a law of general application. Only politicians adorning their speeches with historical arguments have this power; and even they never agree. An historical event cannot be isolated from its circumstances, any more than the onion from its skins, because an event is itself nothing but a set of circumstances, none of which will ever recur.
- George Macaulay Trevelyan, Clio, A Muse and Other Essays, Longman’s, 1913.
History cannot, like physical science, deduce causal laws of general application. All attempts have failed to discover laws of “cause and effect” which are certain to repeat themselves in the institutions and affairs of men. The law of gravitation may be scientifically proved because it is universal and simple. But the historical law that starvation brings on revolt is not proved; indeed the opposite statement, that starvation leads to abject submission, is equally true in the light of past events. You cannot so completely isolate any historical event from its circumstances as to be able to deduce from it a law of general application. Only politicians adorning their speeches with historical arguments have this power; and even they never agree. An historical event cannot be isolated from its circumstances, any more than the onion from its skins, because an event is itself nothing but a set of circumstances, none of which will ever recur.
- George Macaulay Trevelyan, Clio, A Muse and Other Essays, Longman’s, 1913.
Do you have an appropriate quotation about history with documented citation that you would like to add to this page? If so, send email to [email protected] with the words “History Quotation” in the subject field.