History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again
Angelou, Maya

Real solemn history, I cannot be interested in - The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars or pestilences, in every page; the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all.
Austen, Jane

History makes men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtle; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric able to contend.
Bacon, Sir Francis

History, n.  An account mostly false, of events mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, & soldiers mostly fools.
Bierce, Ambrose Gwinett

History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon.
Bonaparte, Napoleon

The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments.
Borah, William Edgar

You can never plan the future by the past.
Burke, Edmund

God cannot alter the past, though historians can
Butler, Samuel

There are two kinds of men: the ones who make history and the ones who endure it.
Cela, Camilo José

History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it.
Churchill, Sir Winston Leonard Spencer

If we open up a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find that we have lost the future.
Churchill, Sir Winston Leonard Spencer

The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see
Churchill, Sir Winston Leonard Spencer

Learn all you can about the history of the past. For how else can one even make a guess is going to happen in the future.
Churchill, Sir Winston Leonard Spencer

To be ignorant of what happened before you were born... is to live the life of a child for ever.
Cicero, Marcus Tullius

History is a vast early warning system.
Cousins, Norman

History repeats itself; that's one of the things that's wrong with history
Darrow, Clarence Seward

Of all national assets archives are the most precious; they are the gift of one generation to another and the extent of our care of them marks the extent of our civilization.
Doughty, Sir Arthur George

Most of us spend too much time on the last twenty-four hours and too little on the last six thousand years.
Durant, William James

One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say
Durant, William James

Civilization is a stream with banks. The stream is sometimes filled with blood from people killing, stealing, shouting and doing the things historians usually record, while on the banks, unnoticed, people build homes, make love, raise children, sing songs, write poetry and even whittle statues. The story of civilization is the story of what happened on the banks. Historians are pessimists because they ignore the banks for the river.
Durant, William James

It is a lesson which all history teaches wise men, to put trust in ideas, and not in circumstances.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo

Things are more like they are now than they have ever been
Ford, Gerald Rudolph

History never looks like history when you are living through it
Gardner, John W

Biographical history, as taught in our public schools, is still largely a history of boneheads: ridiculous kings and queens, paranoid political leaders, compulsive voyagers, ignorant generals - the flotsam and jetsam of historical currents. The men who radically altered history, the great scientists and mathematicians, are seldom mentioned, if at all.
Gardner, Martin

You can clutch the past so tightly to your chest that it leaves your arms too full to embrace the present
Glidewell, Jan