History quotes

Once you get into this great stream of history, you can't get out.

A lawyer without history or literature is a mechanic, a mere working mason if he possesses some knowledge of these, he may venture to call himself an architect.

Of all the species of literary composition, perhaps biography is the most delightful. The attention concentrated on one individual gives a unity to the materials of which it is composed, which is wanting in general history.

Every literary critic believes he will outwit history and have the last word.

The greatest honor history can bestow is that of peacemaker.

I think documentaries are the greatest way to educate an entire generation that doesn't often look back to learn anything about the history that provided a safe haven for so many of us today.

Imagination is always the fabric of social life and the dynamic of history. The influence of real needs and compulsions, of real interests and materials, is indirect because the crowd is never conscious of it.

The only history is a mere question of one's struggle inside oneself. But that is the joy of it. One need neither discover Americas nor conquer nations, and yet one has as great a work as Columbus or Alexander, to do.

Now, there are some who would like to rewrite history - revisionist historians is what I like to call them.

One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say.

Presidents quickly realize that while a single act might destroy the world they live in, no one single decision can make life suddenly better or can turn history around for the good.

Inflation is bringing us true democracy. For the first time in history, luxuries and necessities are selling at the same price.

We have nothing in our history or position to invite aggression we have everything to beckon us to the cultivation of relations of peace and amity with all nations.

A woman's whole life is a history of the affections.

In Jewish history there are no coincidences.

Was it not enough punishment and suffering in history that we were uprooted and made helpless slaves not only in new colonial outposts but also domestically.

No man is truly great who is great only in his lifetime. The test of greatness is the page of history.

Americans are rising to the tasks of history, and they expect the same of us.

The people who have really made history are the martyrs.

History repeats itself, and that's one of the things that's wrong with history.