134 History Quotes That Are Perfect For When You Are Living Through Historic Events (2024)

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“You have to know the past to understand the present.” ― Carl Sagan

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“There is no document of civilization that is not also a document of barbarism.” ― Walter Benjamin

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“A generation which ignores history has no past and no future.” - Robert Heinlein

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“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

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“History gives answers only to those who know how to ask questions.” - Hajo Holborn

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“The more I study history the more I realize how little mankind has changed. There are no new scripts, just different actors.” - Richard Paul Evans

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“We learn from history that we don't learn from history!” ― Desmond Tutu

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“Well, that's history for you, folks. Unfair, untrue and for the most part written by folk who weren't even there.” ― Joanne Harris

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"We spend a great deal of time studying history, which, let's face it, is mostly the history of stupidity." ― Stephen Hawking

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“History is a vast early warning system.” - Norman Cousins

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“It might be a good idea if the various countries of the world occasionally swapped history books, just to see what the other people are doing with the same set of facts.” - Bill Vaughan

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“History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme.” ― Mark Twain

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“History, like love, is so apt to surround her heroes with an atmosphere of imaginary brightness.” ― James Fenimore Cooper

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“There's an old saying about those who forget history. I don't remember it, but it's good.” ― Stephen Colbert

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“We are not makers of history. We are made by history.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

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"History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, however, if faced with courage, need not be lived again." - Maya Angelou

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"History laughs at both the victim and the aggressor." - Mahmoud Darwish

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“If you want to understand today you have to search yesterday.” - Pearl S. Buck

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“The entire history of mankind is, in any case, nothing but a prolonged fight to the death for the conquest of universal prestige and absolute power.” - Albert Camus

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“[The historian is] an unsuccessful novelist.” - H. L. Mencken

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“Remember that all through history, there have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they seem invincible. But in the end, they always fall. Always.” ― Mahatma Gandhi

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“The sea is nothing but a library of all the tears in history.” ― Lemony Snicket

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“Reality denied comes back to haunt.” ― Philip K. Dick

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“History is a wheel, for the nature of man is fundamentally unchanging. What has happened before will perforce happen again.” ― George R.R. Martin

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“One cannot and must not try to erase the past merely because it does not fit the present.” ― Golda Meir

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“People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.” ― James Baldwin

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“Right time, right place, right people equals success. Wrong time, wrong place, wrong people equals most of the real human history.”― Idries Shah

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“If reason ruled the world would history even exist?” ― Ryszard Kapuściński

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“The repeated lies become history, but they don't necessarily become the truth.” ― Colum McCann

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“If history and science have taught us anything, it is that passion and desire are not the same as truth.” – E. O. Wilson

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“History is the study of all the world’s crime.” - Voltaire

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“What is the use trying to describe the flowing of a river at any one moment, and then at the next moment, and then at the next, and the next, and the next? You wear out. You say ‘There is a great river and it flows through this land, and we have named it History’.” - Ursula K. Le Guin

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“If you don't know history, then you don't know anything. You are a leaf that doesn't know it is part of a tree. ” ― Michael Crichton

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“We learn from experience that men never learn anything from experience.” ― George Bernard Shaw

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“History is merely a list of surprises. It can only prepare us to be surprised yet again.” ― Kurt Vonnegut

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“No volume of history is insignificant, even the worst chapters. Especially the worst chapters.” – Terri Guillemets

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“History is philosophy teaching by examples.” – Thucydides

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“History is who we are and why we are the way we are.” - David McCullough

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“To study history means submitting yourself to chaos, but nevertheless retaining your faith in order and meaning.” - Herman Hesse

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“The historian must serve two masters: the past and the present.” - Fritz Stern

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“History is an aggregate of half-truths, semi-truths, fables, myths, rumours, prejudices, personal narratives, gossip and official prevarications. It is a canvas upon which thousands of artists throughout the ages have splashed their conceptions and interpretations of a day and an era.” - Philip D. Jordan

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“History is an argument without end.” - Pieter Geyl

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“When history fails to shed light on the truth, myth creates its own.” ― Samantha Shannon

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“A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots.“ ― Marcus Garvey

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“You don’t change the course of history by turning the faces of portraits to the wall.” – Jawaharlal Nehru

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“History is as light as individual human life, unbearably light, light as a feather, as dust swirling into the air, as whatever will no longer exist tomorrow.” ― Milan Kundera

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“History is information. Memory is part of your identity.” — David Miliband

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"The historian will tell you what happened. The novelist will tell you what it felt like." - E. L. Doctorow

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"We must admit that history is enjoyable to a large extent because it enables us to pass judgement on the past." - Douglas Hurd

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“A history professor once told me that there are two ways we learn: you can put your hand on the hot stove, or you can hear tales of people who already did that and how it turned out for them.” ― Dan Carlin

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“History is a jangle of accidents, blunders, surprises and absurdities, and so is our knowledge of it, but if we are to report it at all we must impose some order upon it.” - Henry Steele Commager

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“Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” - George Santayana

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“Study history, study history. In history lies all the secrets of statecraft.” - Winston Churchill

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“Every moment happens twice: inside and outside, and they are two different histories.” ― Zadie Smith

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“The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.” ― L.P. Hartley

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“If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten.” ― Rudyard Kipling

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“Time after time, history demonstrates that when people don't want to believe something, they have enormous skills of ignoring it altogether.” ― Jim Butcher

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“Horror is the natural reaction to the last 5,000 years of history.” ― Robert Anton Wilson

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“The lovers of romance can go elsewhere for satisfaction but where can the lovers of truth turn if not to history?” – Katharine Anthony

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“More and more, I tend to read history. I often find it more up to date than the daily newspapers.” – Joe Murray

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“The game of history is usually played by the best and the worst over the heads of the majority in the middle.” – Eric Hoffer

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“History is mostly guessing; the rest is prejudice.” — Will Durant

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“Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.” — Aristotle

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"Psychology keeps trying to vindicate human nature. History keeps undermining the effort." - Mason Cooley

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“If you don’t know history, it’s as if you were born yesterday. If you were born yesterday then any leader can tell you anything.” - Howard Zinn

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“History is instructive. What it suggests to people is that even if they do little things, if they walk on the picket line, if they join a vigil, if they write a letter to their local newspaper… Anything they do, however small, becomes part of a much larger sort of flow of energy. And when enough people do enough things, however small they are, then change takes place.” - Howard Zinn

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“The truth that all historical writing, even the most honest, is unconsciously subjective, since every age is bound, in spite of itself, to make the dead perform whatever tricks it finds necessary for its own peace of mind.” - Carl Becker

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“I can only note that the past is beautiful because one never realizes an emotion at the time. It expands later, and thus we don't have complete emotions about the present, only about the past.” ― Virginia Woolf

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“That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach.” ― Aldous Huxley

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“The human race tends to remember the abuses to which it has been subjected rather than the endearments. What's left of kisses? Wounds, however, leave scars.” ― Bertolt Brecht

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“History isn't about dates and places and wars. It's about the people who fill the spaces between them.” ― Jodi Picoult

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“What one generation finds ridiculous, the next accepts; and the third shudders when it looks back on what the first did.” ― Peter Singer

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“Let us study things that are no more. It is necessary to understand them, if only to avoid them.” ― Victor Hugo

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“History is a Rorschach test, people. What you see when you look at it tells you as much about yourself as it does about the past.” ― Jennifer Donnelly

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“History is no more fixed and dead than the future. The past is no further away than the last breath you took.” ― Robin Hobb

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“What is history but the story of how politicians have squandered the blood and treasure of the human race?” ― Thomas Sowell

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“A generation which ignores history has no past — and no future.” ― Robert A. Heinlein

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“History is a symphony of echoes heard and unheard. It is a poem with events as verses.” – Charles Angoff

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“History is not a burden on the memory but an illumination of the soul.” – Lord Acton

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“History is the only laboratory we have in which to test the consequences of thought.” – Etienne Gilson

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“History never looks like history when you are living through it.” – John W. Gardner

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“Neither the life of an individual nor the history of a society can be understood without understanding both.” – C. Wright Mills

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“It takes an endless amount of history to make even a little tradition.” — Henry James

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“History is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.” — Edward Gibbon

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“The History of the past interests us only in so far as it illuminates the history of the present.” – Ernest Dimnet

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“The history of mankind is the instant between two strides taken by a traveler.” — Franz Kafka

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“Why should we look to the past in order to prepare for the future? Because there is nowhere else to look.” ― James Burke

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"Whether in commerce, science, or politics — history remembers the artists." - Naval Ravikant

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"On human stupidity: It is one of the most powerful forces that shape history." - Yuval Noah Harari

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"A library is the delivery room for the birth of ideas, a place where history comes to life." - Norman Cousins

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“No other discipline has its portals so wide open to the general public as history.” - Johan Huizinga

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“What experience and history teach is that nations and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted upon any lessons they might have drawn from it.” - Georg Hegel

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“Study the historian before you begin to study the facts.” - Edward Hallett Carr

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“Perhaps nobody has changed the course of history as much as the historians.” - Franklin P. Jones

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“Historians are like deaf people who go on answering questions that no one has asked them.” - Leo Tolstoy

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“History is always written by the winners. When two cultures clash, the loser is obliterated, and the winner writes the history books-books which glorify their own cause and disparage the conquered foe.” - Dan Brown

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“The past is a source of knowledge, and the future is a source of hope. Love of the past implies faith in the future.” ― Stephen Ambrose

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“History is a constant race between invention and catastrophe. Education helps but it’s never enough. You also must run.” ― Frank Herbert

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“In history, a great volume is unrolled for our instruction, drawing the materials of future wisdom from the past errors and infirmities of mankind.” – Edmund Burke

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“Difficulty is the excuse history never accepts.” — Edward R. Murrow

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“Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning.” – Albert Einstein

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"Human history is not the product of the wise direction of human reason, but is shaped by the forces of emotion — our dreams, our pride, our greed, our fears, and our desire for revenge." - Lin Yutang

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"History books that contain no lies are extremely dull." - Anatole France

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"There are still many causes worth sacrificing for, so much history yet to be made." - Michelle Obama

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“The student is to read history actively not passively.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson

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"You don’t hate history, you hate the way it was taught to you in high school." - Stephen Ambrose

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“The hare of history once more overtakes the tortoise of art.” ― Kurt Vonnegut

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“History is the story of events, with praise or blame.” - Cotton Mather

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“To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. For what is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?” ― Marcus Tullius Cicero

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“Anybody can make history; only a great man can write it.” ― Oscar Wilde

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“History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. History is who we are and why we are the way we are. ” ― David McCullough

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“I am what time, circ*mstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am, also, much more than that. So are we all.” ― James Baldwin

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“Human history is a Gaian dream.” ― Terence McKenna

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“History is a kind of introduction to more interesting people than we can possibly meet in our restricted lives; let us not neglect the opportunity.” – Dexter Perkins

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“The writing of histories – as Goethe once noted – is one way of getting rid of the weight of the past… The writing of history liberates us from history.” – Benedetto Croce

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“History can bring luck: this is what we can call optimism.” – Stephane Hessel

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“Life moves fast. As much as you can, learn from your history, you have to move forward.” – Eddie Vedder

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“History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies.” – Alexis de Tocqueville

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"On the day when man told the story of his life to man, history was born." - Alfred De Vigny

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"When the great history of trouble is written, my family will stand extremely high in the table of contents." - Allan Sherman

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"The public history of modern art is the story of conventional people not knowing what they are dealing with." - Golda Meir

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"A myth is far truer than a history, for a history only gives a story of the shadows, whereas a myth gives a story of the substances that cast the shadows." - Annie Besant

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"Never doubt that you can change history. You already have." - Marge Piercy

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"Whatever we do or fail to do will influence the course of history." - Arthur Henderson

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"Without words, without writing and without books there would be no history, there could be no concept of humanity." - Hermann Hesse

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"We can learn from history, but we can also deceive ourselves when we selectively take evidence from the past to justify what we have already made up our minds to do." ― Margaret MacMillan

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“One of the deepest impulses in man is the impulse to record, to scratch a drawing on a tusk or keep a diary… The enduring value of the past is, one might say, the very basis of civilization.” - John Jay Chapman

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“A historian ought to be exact, sincere and impartial, free from passion, unbiased by interest, fear, resentment or affection. And faithful to the truth, which is the mother of history, the preserver of great actions, the enemy of oblivion, the witness of the past, the director of the future.” - B. R. Ambedkar

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“History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it.” - Winston Churchill

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“As a historian, I have learned that, in fact, not everyone who reaches back into history can survive it. And it is not only reaching back that endangers us; sometimes history itself reaches inexorably forward for us with its shadowy claws.” ― Elizabeth Kostova

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“To believe that what has not occurred in history will not occur at all, is to argue disbelief in the dignity of man.” ― Mahatma Gandhi

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"Reading a book is like re-writing it for yourself. You bring to a novel, anything you read, all your experience of the world. You bring your history and you read it in your own terms." - Angela Carter

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“The good historian… must be fearless, uncorrupted, free, the friend of truth and of liberty. One who calls a fig a fig, and a skiff a skiff, neither giving nor withholding from any, from favour or from enmity, not influenced by pity, by shame, or by remorse. A just judge… a stranger to all, of no country, bound only by his own laws, acknowledging no sovereign, never considering what this or that man may say of him, but relating faithfully everything as it happened.” - Lucian

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“I don’t know much about history and I wouldn’t give a nickel for all the history in the world. It means nothing to me. History is more or less bunk. It’s tradition. We don’t want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history worth a tinker’s damn is the history we make today.” - Henry Ford

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