The entire history of mankind is, in any case, nothing but a prolonged fight to the death for the conquest of universal prestige and absolute power. – Albert Camus, The Rebel
The prime deaths of history star the textbooks like constellations of power. – Terri Guillemets
For me, in fact, the mark of the historic is the nonchalance with which it picks up an individual and deposits him in a trend, like a house playfully moved by a tornado. – Mary McCarthy, On the Contrary
The unrecorded past is none other than our old friend, the tree in the primeval forest which fell without being heard. – Barbara Tuchman
Our historic imagination is at best slightly developed. We generalise and idealise the past egregiously. We set up little toys to stand as symbols for centuries and the complicated lives of countless individuals. – John Dewey, Characters and Events
[History is] a tyranny over the souls of the dead – and so the imagination of the living. – William Carlos Williams
The mists remain of the false glory that erupts from history. – Miguel de Unamuno, En Gredos
History is the discipline closest to life; and life is rarely free of contradictions. – Karl J. Weintraub, Visions of Culture
History is who we are and why we are the way we are. – David McCullough
The historian amputates reality. – Gaetano Salvemini, Historian and Scientist
History is a jangle of accidents, blunders, surprises and absurdities, and so is our knowledge of it, but if we are to report it at all we must impose some order upon it. – Henry Steele Commanger, The Nature and the Study of History
History is not a pattern-book of fossilized ideologies. – Frederick Maurice Powicke, Three Lectures
History… is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake. – James Joyce, Ulysses
History is but the nail on which the picture hangs. – Alexandre Dumas, Catherine Howard
The future is dark, the present burdensome. Only the past, dead and buried, bears contemplation. – G.R. Elton, The Practice of History
All history becomes subjective; in other words there is properly no history, only biography. – Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays: History
History is the essence of innumerable biographies. – Thomas Carlyle, On History
History only exists, in the final analysis, for God. – Albert Camus, The Rebel
[History is] petrified imagination. – Arthur Baer
[History is a] mixture of error and violence. – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
