History Quotes

Asking the author of historical novels to teach you about history is like expecting the composer of a melody to provide answers about radio transmission.

The history of mankind is confined within a limited period, and from every quarter brings an intimation that human affairs have had a beginning.

No one ever really 'learns' from history, because choices never present themselves in exactly the same way, and because you can always choose similarities and differences to fit current needs.

I'm a hopeless mother; a hopeless wife; I have to try harder. I'm just a pathetic case history, really.

To take wine into our mouths is to savor a droplet of the river of human history.

The common people have no history: persecuted by the present, they cannot think of preserving the memory of the past.

But Maastricht was not the end of history. It was a first step towards a Europe of growth, of employment, a social Europe. That was the vision of Francois Mitterrand. We are far from that now.

My mother took my picture to a model agency and the rest is history.

Throughout America's young history there has been a necessary tension between the individual and the group.

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

I know every note in every song, the whole history of it, even parts that were there and are gone.

All history has been a history of class struggles between dominated classes at various stages of social development.

I don't want to go negative on Franklin Delano Roosevelt, but he didn't pass an economic deal in the first 100 days. We have passed the largest Recovery Act in the history of the country.

Everybody knows they're on the Obama team: There isn't vice presidential vs. presidential division, there's not a generational pull. People have internalized that this is a real moment in history.

I'm something of a history buff. It's deliberate that a lot of my films have been period pieces.

Prayer holds together the shattered fragments of the creation. It makes history possible.

As a kid, I sensed history going on all around me, but the basic thrust of it didn't move me.

It is as if Clinton had called one of the most respected character witnesses in all of U.S. history to testify that the primal urge has a most distinguished presidential pedigree.

History is the transformation of tumultuous conquerors into silent footnotes.

Natural selection, as it has operated in human history, favors not only the clever but the murderous.

I have always felt that this story is universal. When I began to understand the details of the history, I felt that the most compelling aspect was not what happened, but what continues to happen and how it is denied.

Few bands in hard rock history have been so adept at balancing the awesome and trivial as Van Halen in their prime.

From lies to forgeries the step is not so long, and I have written technical essays on the logic of forgeries and on the influence of forgeries on history.

A poet in history is divine, but a poet in the next room is a joke.

Stereotypes involving Christian identity, Christian persecution is so far back in history now that no one fears it being revived, unless you live in China, I guess.

I'm a smart guy, I know the history of this issue and why people care about it.

Irish fiction is full of secrets, guilty pasts, divided identities. It is no wonder that there is such a rich tradition of Gothic writing in a nation so haunted by history.

Man is not logical and his intellectual history is a record of mental reserves and compromises. He hangs on to what he can in his old beliefs even when he is compelled to surrender their logical basis.

India is a curious place that still preserves the past, religions, and its history. No matter how modern India becomes, it is still very much an old country.

Our history is that we can very aggressively, if necessary, and openly and democratically discuss our differences. We have a democratic history in which we come together and vote on these things.