History Quotes

• Chaos often breeds life, when order breeds habit.

  Henry B. Adams

• Posterity: you will never know how much it has cost my generation to preserve your freedom. I hope you will make good use of it.

  John Quincy Adams

• History is the sum total of things that could have been avoided.

  Konrad Adenauer

• Open markets offer the only realistic hope of pulling billions of people in developing countries out of abject poverty, while sustaining prosperity in the industrialized world.

  Kofi Annan

• Failure is impossible.

  Susan B. Anthony

• This is one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.

  Neil Armstrong

• The past is malleable and flexible, changing as our recollection interprets and re-explains what has happened.

  Peter Berger

• I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief... For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

  Wendell Berry

• History is an account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools.

  Ambrose Bierce

• In my view, far from deserving condemnation for their courageous reporting, the New York Times, the Washington Post and other newspapers should be commended for serving the purpose that the Founding Fathers saw so clearly.

  Hugo Black

• We, therefore, here in Britain stand shoulder to shoulder with our American friends in this hour of tragedy, and we, like them, will not rest until this evil is driven from our world.

  Tony Blair

• The past actually happened but history is only what someone wrote down.

  A. Whitney Brown

• The deliberate and deadly attacks which were carried out yesterday against our country were more than acts of terror. They were acts of war.

  George W. Bush

• I came, I saw, I conquered.

  Julius Caesar

• Be as a tower firmly set; Shakes not its top for any blast that blows.

  Dante Alighieri

• People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.

  James A. Baldwin

• An ordinary man can surround himself with two thousand books and thenceforward have at least one place in the world in which it is possible to be happy.

  Augustine Birrell

• Friendship is a word, the very sight of which in print makes the heart warm.

  Augustine Birrell

• Given Pounds and five years, and an ordinary man can in the ordinary course, without any undue haste or putting any pressure upon his taste, surround himself with books, all in his own language, and thence forward have at least one place in the world.

  Augustine Birrell

• Libraries are not made, they grow.

  Augustine Birrell

• That great dust-heap called 'history'.

  Augustine Birrell

• Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever.

  Napoleon Bonaparte

• History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon.

  Napoleon Bonaparte

• What is history but a fable agreed upon?

  Napoleon Bonaparte

• Fear of serious injury alone cannot justify oppression of free speech and assembly. Men feared witches and burnt women. It is the function of speech to free men from the bondage of irrational fears.

  Louis D. Brandeis

• Most of the things worth doing in the world had been declared impossible before they were done.

  Louis D. Brandeis

• God cannot alter the past, though historians can.

  Samuel Butler

• When you do the common things in life in an uncommon way, you will command the attention of the world.

  George Washington Carver

• Something as curious as the monarchy won't survive unless you take account of people's attitudes. After all, if people don't want it, they won't have it.

  Prince Charles

• History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.

  Winston Churchill

• Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.

  Confucius

• Beware of endeavoring to become a great man in a hurry. One such attempt in ten thousand may succeed. These are fearful odds.

  Benjamin Disraeli

• The most terrible job in warfare is to be a second lieutenant leading a platoon when you are on the battlefield.

  Dwight D. Eisenhower

• The greater the difficulty, the more the glory in surmounting it.

  Epicurus

• History is more or less bunk.

  Henry Ford

• A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history.

  Mohandas Gandhi

• I have tried to lift France out of the mud. But she will return to her errors and vomitings. I cannot prevent the French from being French.

  Charles de Gaulle

• History is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.

  Edward Gibbon

• Hubert Humphrey talks so fast that listening to him is like trying to read Playboy magazine with your wife turning the pages.

  Barry Goldwater

• We used to root for the Indians against the cavalry, because we didn't think it was fair in the history books that when the cavalry won it was a great victory, and when the Indians won it was a massacre.

  Dick Gregory

• Honor is not the exclusive property of any political party.

  Herbert Hoover

• I'm the only person of distinction who has ever had a depression named for him.

  Herbert Hoover

• No greater nor more affectionate honor can be conferred on an American than to have a public school named after him.

  Herbert Hoover

• You can't set a hen in one morning and have chicken salad for lunch.

  George M. Humphrey

• I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.

  Thomas Jefferson

• Being president is like being a jackass in a hailstorm. There's nothing to do but to stand there and take it.

  Lyndon B. Johnson

• Terrorism takes us back to ages we thought were long gone if we allow it a free hand to corrupt democratic societies and destroy the basic rules of international life.

  Jacques Chirac

• The construction of Europe is an art. It is the art of the possible.

  Jacques Chirac

• A truly American sentiment recognizes the dignity of labor and the fact that honor lies in honest toil.

  Grover Cleveland

• Following the light of the sun, we left the Old World.

  Christopher Columbus

• I have noticed that nothing I never said ever did me any harm.

  Calvin Coolidge

• History is a vast early warning system.

  Norman Cousins

• One who comes to the Court must come to adore, not to protest. That's the new gloss on the 1st Amendment.

  William O. Douglas

• Tell the FBI that the kidnappers should pick out a judge that Nixon wants back.

  William O. Douglas

• I wouldn't attach too much importance to these student riots. I remember when I was a student at the Sorbonne in Paris, I used to go out and riot occasionally.

  John Foster Dulles

• I cannot lead you into battle. I do not give you laws or administer justice but I can do something else - I can give my heart and my devotion to these old islands and to all the peoples of our brotherhood of nations.

  Elizabeth II

• History never looks like history when you are living through it.

  John W. Gardner

• There are no extraordinary men... just extraordinary circumstances that ordinary men are forced to deal with.

  William Halsey

• Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty.

  Frank Herbert

• It takes an endless amount of history to make even a little tradition.

  Henry James

• The world we see that seems so insane is the result of a belief system that is not working. To perceive the world differently, we must be willing to change our belief system, let the past slip away, expand our sense of now, and dissolve the fear in our minds.

  William James

• The judicial system is the most expensive machine ever invented for finding out what happened and what to do about it.

  Irving R. Kaufman

• The Supreme Court's only armor is the cloak of public trust; its sole ammunition, the collective hopes of our society.

  Irving R. Kaufman

• To the extent that the judicial profession becomes the daily routine of deciding cases on the most secure precedents and the narrowest grounds available, the judicial mind atrophies and its perspective shrinks.

  Irving R. Kaufman

• Dad, I'm in some trouble. There's been an accident and you're going to hear all sorts of things about me from now on. Terrible things.

  Edward Kennedy

• What is sad for women of my generation is that they weren't supposed to work if they had families. What were they going to do when the children are grown - watch the raindrops coming down the window pane?

  Jackie Kennedy

• History is a relentless master. It has no present, only the past rushing into the future. To try to hold fast is to be swept aside.

  John F. Kennedy

• If we cannot now end our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity.

  John F. Kennedy

• Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past. Let us accept our own responsibility for the future.

  John F. Kennedy

• We would like to live as we once lived, but history will not permit it.

  John F. Kennedy

• When written in Chinese, the word "crisis" is composed of two characters. One represents danger and the other represents opportunity.

  John F. Kennedy

• The more bombers, the less room for doves of peace.

  Nikita Khrushchev

• History is a tool used by politicians to justify their intentions.

  Ted Koppel

• It is impossible to predict the time and progress of revolution. It is governed by its own more or less mysterious laws.

  Vladimir Lenin

• They were afraid, never having learned what I taught myself: Defeat the fear of death and welcome the death of fear.

  G. Gordon Liddy

• Could I have but a line a century hence crediting a contribution to the advance of peace, I would yield every honor which has been accorded by war.

  Douglas MacArthur

• In my dreams I hear again the crash of guns, the rattle of musketry, the strange, mournful mutter of the battlefield.

  Douglas MacArthur

• They died hard, those savage men - like wounded wolves at bay. They were filthy, and they were lousy, and they stunk. And I loved them.

  Douglas MacArthur

• Whether in chains or in laurels, liberty knows nothing but victories.

  Douglas MacArthur

• An Edwardian lady in full dress was a wonder to behold, and her preparations for viewing were awesome.

  William Manchester

• Despise the enemy strategically, but take him seriously tactically.

  Mao Tse-Tung

• Historian: an unsuccessful novelist.

  H. L. Mencken

• Legend: A lie that has attained the dignity of age.

  H. L. Mencken

• France is delighted at this new opportunity to show the world that when one has the will one can succeed in joining peoples who have been brought close by history.

  Francois Mitterrand

• The real 1960s began on the afternoon of November 22, 1963. It came to seem that Kennedy's murder opened some malign trap door in American culture, and the wild bats flapped out.

  Lance Morrow

• Difficulty is the excuse history never accepts.

  Edward R. Murrow

• We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.

  Edward R. Murrow

• I can see clearly now... that I was wrong in not acting more decisively and more forthrightly in dealing with Watergate.

  Richard M. Nixon

• In the long term we can hope that religion will change the nature of man and reduce conflict. But history is not encouraging in this respect. The bloodiest wars in history have been religious wars.

  Richard M. Nixon

• If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read: "President Can't Swim."

  Lyndon B. Johnson

• The Russians feared Ike. They didn't fear me.

  Lyndon B. Johnson

• It was a Greek tragedy. Nixon was fulfilling his own nature. Once it started it could not end otherwise.

  Henry A. Kissinger

• The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew.

  Abraham Lincoln

• You must pursue this investigation of Watergate even if it leads to the president. I'm innocent. You've got to believe I'm innocent. If you don't, take my job.

  Richard M. Nixon

• Statutes authorizing unreasonable searches were the core concern of the framers of the 4th Amendment.

  Sandra Day O'Connor

• Keeping books on social aid is capitalistic nonsense. I just use the money for the poor. I can't stop to count it.

  Evita Peron

• Time is my greatest enemy.

  Evita Peron

• When the rich think about the poor, they have poor ideas.

  Evita Peron

• Never doubt that you can change history. You already have.

  Marge Piercy

• It's a very good historical book about history.

  Dan Quayle

• People that are really very weird can get into sensitive positions and have a tremendous impact on history.

  Dan Quayle

• The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much it is whether we provide enough for those who have little.

  Franklin D. Roosevelt

• Russians can give you arms but only the United States can give you a solution.

  Anwar Sadat

• We peruse one ideal, that of bringing people together in peace, irrespective of race, religion and political convictions, for the benefit of mankind.

  Juan Antonio Samaranch

• It is necessary for me to establish a winner image. Therefore, I have to beat somebody.

  Richard M. Nixon

• I haven't, in the 23 years that I have been in the uniformed services of the United States of America, ever violated an order - not one.

  Oliver North

• A pint of sweat, saves a gallon of blood.

  George S. Patton

• Americans love to fight. All real Americans love the sting of battle.

  George S. Patton

• Although... the Chief Magistrate must almost of necessity be chosen by a party and stand pledged to its principles and measures, yet in his official action he should not be the President of a party only, but of the whole people of the United States.

  James K. Polk

• Peace, plenty, and contentment reign throughout our borders, and our beloved country presents a sublime moral spectacle to the world.

  James K. Polk

• 90 percent of my time is spent on 10 percent of the world.

  Colin Powell

• The chief condition on which, life, health and vigor depend on, is action. It is by action that an organism develops its faculties, increases its energy, and attains the fulfillment of its destiny.

  Colin Powell

• If any foreign minister begins to defend to the death a "peace conference," you can be sure his government has already placed its orders for new battleships and airplanes.

  Joseph Stalin

• It is the soothing thing about history that it does repeat itself.

  Gertrude Stein

• They can shout down the head of the physics department at Cal Tech.

  James Stockdale

• Be assured those will be thy worst enemies, not to whom thou hast done evil, but who have done evil to thee. And those will be thy best friends, not to whom thou hast done good, but who have done good to thee.

  Tacitus

• A world without nuclear weapons would be less stable and more dangerous for all of us.

  Margaret Thatcher

• History is a pack of lies about events that never happened told by people who weren't there.

  George Santayana

• Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

  George Santayana

• History is a cyclic poem written by time upon the memories of man.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

• Remember, God provides the best camouflage several hours out of every 24.

  David M. Shoup

• If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.

  Desmond Tutu

• The very ink with which history is written is merely fluid prejudice.

  Mark Twain

• Observe good faith and justice toward all nations. Cultivate peace and harmony with all.

  George Washington

• The past is really almost as much a work of the imagination as the future.

  Jessamyn West

• Democratic nations must try to find ways to starve the terrorist and the hijacker of the oxygen of publicity on which they depend.

  Margaret Thatcher

• To wear your heart on your sleeve isn't a very good plan; you should wear it inside, where it functions best.

  Margaret Thatcher

• History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

• Civilization is a movement and not a condition, a voyage and not a harbor.

  Arnold J. Toynbee

• History is a vision of God's creation on the move.

  Arnold J. Toynbee

• The Marine Corps is the Navy's police force and as long as I am President that is what it will remain. They have a propaganda machine that is almost equal to Stalin's.

  Harry S. Truman

• The fleet sailed to its war base in the North Sea, headed not so much for some rendezvous with glory as for rendezvous with discretion.

  Barbara Tuchman

• Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.

  H. G. Wells

• The 1st Amendment protects the right to speak, not the right to spend.

  Byron White

• The future has a way of arriving unannounced.

  George Will

• World War II was the last government program that really worked.

  George Will

• The man who is swimming against the stream knows the strength of it.

  Woodrow Wilson

• Why should we honour those that die upon the field of battle? A man may show as reckless a courage in entering into the abyss of himself.

  William Butler Yeats

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