History is a cyclic poem written by Time upon the memories of man. – Percy Bysshe Shelley
If you want to understand today, you have to search yesterday. – Pearl Buck
History is philosophy teaching by examples. – Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War
People are trapped in history, and history is trapped in them. – James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son
Until lions have their historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunters. – African Proverb
The memories of men are too frail a thread to hang history from. – John Still, The Jungle Tide
A history in which every particular incident may be true may on the whole be false. – Thomas Babington Macaulay
More and more, I tend to read history. I often find it more up to date than the daily newspapers. – Joe Murray, “History updates current events,” Spartanburg Herald-Journal, May 1
History with its flickering lamp stumbles along the trail of the past, trying to reconstruct its scenes, to revive its echoes, and kindle with pale gleams the passion of former days. – Winston Churchill
History is a mighty dramos, enacted upon the theatre of times, with suns for lamps and eternity for a background. – Thomas Carlyle
History is a kind of introduction to more interesting people than we can possibly meet in our restricted lives; let us not neglect the opportunity. – Dexter Perkins
Very few things happen at the right time, and the rest do not happen at all: the conscientious historian will correct these defects. – Herodotus, The History of Herodotus
History: gossip well told. – Elbert Hubbard, The Roycroft Dictionary
History is a symphony of echoes heard and unheard. It is a poem with events as verses. – Charles Angoff
If one could make alive again for other people some cobwebbed skein of old dead intrigues and breathe breath and character into dead names and stiff portraits. That is history to me! – George Macaulay Trevelyan
The history of the world is the record of a man in quest of his daily bread and butter. – Hendrik Wilhelm van Loon, The Story of Mankind
Historians are gossips who tease the dead. – Voltaire, Scribbling Books
History is filled with the sound of silken slippers going downstairs and wooden shoes coming up. – Voltaire
We are the prisoners of history. Or are we? – Robert Penn Warren, Segregation
History never looks like history when you are living through it. – John W. Gardner
