History — that little sewer where man loves to wallow. – Francis Ponge
History: a collection of epitaphs. – Elbert Hubbard, The Roycroft Dictionary
Every great writer is a writer of history, let him treat on almost any subject he may. – Walter Savage Landor, Imaginary Conversation: Diogenes and Plato
[T]he historian must serve two masters, the past and the present. – Fritz Stern, The Varieties of History
[History is] a damn dim candle over a damn dark abyss. – W. Stull Holt
No one can really know the life of his own day, let alone that of times long past. Always the historian sees as in a mirror darkly, the reds and the golds rendered drab by the shadows of time. – Earl R. Beck, On Teaching History in Colleges and Universities
When we skim along the surface of history we see little but the rough barren rocks that rise out of it. – Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers
Man is an historical animal, with a deep sense of his own past; and if he cannot integrate the past by a history explicit and true, he will integrate it by a history implicit and false. – Geoffrey Barraclough, History in a Changing World
The idea of history in any age, like the idea of property, or of progress, is an unstable compound; it is put together as needed, by historians or by philosophers, out of the irreconcilable opinions of men. – F. Smith Fussner, The Historical Revolution
Even the most painstaking history is a bridge across an eternal mystery. – Bruce Catton, Prefaces to History
Almost the whole of history is but a sequence of horrors. – Nicolas Chamfort, Maxims and Considerations
One of the deepest impulses in man is the impulse to record, – to scratch a drawing on a tusk or keep a diary, to collect sagas and heap cairns. This instinct as to the enduring value of the past is, one might say, the very basis of civilization. – John Jay Chapman, Memories and Milestones
History is not the past, but a map of the past drawn from a particular point of view to be useful to the modern traveler. – Henry Glassie
Wars usually have the effect of speeding up the process of history. – Pieter Geyl, Debates With Historians
[I]t was that there are no simple lessons in history, that it is human nature that repeats itself, not history. – John Toland
[History] is fallible as every man is fallible. But it is likewise trustworthy, as a man is trustworthy who has looked into himself and come to know how blended are dust and fire in the innermost recesses of the human heart. – Arthur Bestor
History is the open Bible: we historians are not priests to expound it infallibly: our function is to teach people to read it and to reflect upon it for themselves. – George Macaulay Trevelyan
Delusion about history is a serious matter; it can gravely affect the history that is waiting to be made. – John Terraine
History supplies little beyond a list of those who have accommodated themselves with the property of others. – Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary
