History Quotes

Any event, once it has occurred, can be made to appear inevitable by a competent historian.

The greatest inventions were produced in the times of ignorance, as the use of the compass, gunpowder, and printing.

History is the short trudge from Adam to atom.

History is the story of events, with praise or blame.

Men after death are understood worse than men of the present, but heard better.

The most important events in every age never reach the history books.

Revision is the lifeblood of historical scholarship. History is a continuing dialogue between the present and the past. Interpretations of the past are subject to change in response to new evidence, new questions asked of the evidence, new perspectives gained by the passage of time. There is no single, eternal, and immutable “truth” about past […]

Only strong personalities can endure history, the weak ones are extinguished by it.

Few will have the greatness to bend history itself; but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation.

Perhaps in time the so-called dark ages will be thought of as including our own.