The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.
George OrwellYesterday is history tomorrow is a mystery today is God's gift that's why we call it the present.
Joan RiversWithout words, without writing and without books there would be no history, there could be no concept of humanity.
Herman HesseAll the ills of mankind, all the tragic misfortunes that fill the history books, all the political blunders, all the failures of the great leaders have arisen merely from a lack of skill at dancing.
MoliereWell-behaved women seldom make history.
Laurel Thatcher UlrichHistory is an account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools.
Ambrose BierceAnybody can make history. Only a great man can write it.
Oscar WildeWhen I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it - always.
Mahatma GandhiHistory doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme.
Mark TwainNo matter what he does, every person on earth plays a central role in the history of the world. And normally he doesn’t know it.
Paulo CoelhoFor most of history, Anonymous was a woman.
Virginia WoolfMore than any other time in history mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.
Woody AllenThe very ink with which history is written is merely fluid prejudice.
Mark TwainThe means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home.
James MadisonHistory is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies.
Alexis de TocquevilleFrance and the whole of Europe have a great culture and an amazing history. Most important thing though is that people there know how to live! In America they've forgotten all about it. I'm afraid that the American culture is a disaster.
Johnny DeppFor my part I consider that it will be found much better by all parties to leave the past to history, especially as I propose to write that history myself.
Winston ChurchillBy failing seriously to confront the most predicable economic crisis in our nation's history, the President's policies are committing us and our children to a diminished future.
Paul RyanHistory is a pack of lies about events that never happened, told by people who weren't there.
George SantayanaI don't think that a leader can control to any great extent his destiny. Very seldom can he step in and change the situation, if the forces of history are running in another direction.
Richard M. NixonAmerican history is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it.
James Arthur BaldwinHuman history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.
H. G. WellsThe point in history at which we stand is full of promise and danger. The world will either move forward toward unity and widely shared prosperity - or it will move apart.
Franklin D. RooseveltI like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.
Thomas JeffersonHistory teaches that war begins when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap.
Ronald ReaganHistory does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid.
Dwight D. EisenhowerHistory is the devil's scripture
Lord ByronViolent men have not been known in history to die to a man. They die up to a point.
Mahatma GandhiBlood alone moves the wheels of history.
Martin LutherIn this bright future you can't forget your past.
Bob MarleyHistory repeats itself first, as tragedy second as farce.
Karl MarxHistory 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. KennedyIn the long history of the world only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility - I welcome it.
John F. KennedyHistory should be written as philosophy.
VoltaireHistory does nothing, it does not possess immense riches, it does not fight battles. It is men real living who do all this.
Karl MarxHistory does not merely touch on language, but takes place in it.
Theodor W. AdornoMankind has probably done more damage to the Earth in the 20th century, than in all of previous human history.
Jacques Yves CousteauHistory is written by the victors.
Winston ChurchillIn known history nobody has had such capacity for altering the universe than the people of the United States of America. And nobody has gone about it in such an aggressive way.
Alan WattsAmericans are rising to the tasks of history and they expect the same of us.
George W. BushHistory is only the register of crimes and misfortunes.
VoltaireThe history of men's opposition to women's emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story of that emancipation itself.
Virginia WoolfHistory develops, art stands still.
E. M. ForsterStudy the past if you would divine the future.
ConfuciusSomeday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then for a second time in the history of the world man will have discovered fire.
Pierre Teilhard de ChardinHegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history.
George Bernard ShawEvery literary critic believes he will outwit history and have the last word.
Mason CooleyGeography has made us neighbors. History has made us friends. Economics has made us partners and necessity has made us allies. Those whom God has so joined together, let no man put asunder.
John F. KennedyHistory takes time. History makes memory.
Gertrude SteinGod cannot alter the past, though historians can.
Samuel ButlerIn 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. NixonI seldom go into a natural history museum without feeling as if I were attending a funeral.
John BurroughsA Conservative is a fellow who is standing athwart history yelling 'Stop!'
William F. Buckley, Jr.Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history, for poetry expresses the universal and history only the particular.
AristotleHistory is a set of lies agreed upon.
Napoleon BonaparteThe history of mankind is the instant between two strides taken by a traveler.
Franz KafkaHistory never looks like history when you are living through it.
John W. GardnerHistory in general only informs us of what bad government is.
Thomas JeffersonThe marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens, unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments.
George WashingtonHistory shows that there are no invincible armies.
Joseph StalinHistory is more or less bunk.
Henry FordFor this reason poetry is something more philosophical and more worthy of serious attention than history.
AristotleFor the very first time the young are seeing history being made before it is censored by their elders.
Margaret MeadHistory a distillation of rumour.
Thomas CarlyleThe great courageous act that we must all do, is to have the courage to step out of our history and past, so that we can live our dreams.
Oprah WinfreyPerhaps the history of the errors of mankind, all things considered, is more valuable and interesting than that of their discoveries.
Benjamin FranklinBeware the Ides of March.
William ShakespearePassion is universal humanity. Without it religion, history, romance, and art would be useless.
Honore de BalzacNeither a wise man, nor a brave man, lies down on the tracks of history to wait for the train of the future to run over him.
Dwight D. EisenhowerHistory is a race between education and catastrophe.
H. G. WellsAll humanity is passion, without passion religion, history, novels, art, would be ineffectual.
Honore de BalzacFrom their experience, or from the recorded experience of others (history), men learn only what their passions and their metaphysical prejudices allow them to learn.
Aldous HuxleyDe Sade is the one completely consistent and thoroughgoing revolutionary of history.
Aldous HuxleyTruly great people in history never wanted to be great for themselves. All they wanted was the chance to do good for others and be close to God.
Muhammad AliSometimes - history needs a push.
Vladimir LeninHistory is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon.
Napoleon BonaparteHistory makes people wise.
Francis BaconEurope was created by history. America was created by philosophy.
Margaret ThatcherNo humorist is under any obligation to provide answers and probably if you were to delve into the literary history of humour it's probably all about not providing answers because the humorist essentially says: this is the way things are.
P. J. O'RourkeIf you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of the next. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this.
C. S. LewisI believe that's one of the finest action regurgitation scenes in the history of literature ... I'd put it right up there.
Dave BarryI sent American troops to Iraq to make its people free not to make them American. Iraqis will write their own history and find their own way.
George W. BushPeople are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.
James Arthur BaldwinI'm the biggest fighter in the history of the sport. If you don't believe it check the cash register.
Mike TysonWhenever the poetry of myth is interpreted as biography history or science it is killed. The living images become only remote facts of a distant time or place. Furthermore it is never difficult to demonstrate that as science and history mythology is absurd.
Joseph CampbellEvery age has its own poetry, in every age the circumstances of history choose a nation, a race, a class to take up the torch by creating situations that can be expressed or transcended only through poetry.
Jean-Paul SartreWe live in an era with no historical precedents. History is no longer useful as a tool in helping us understand current changes.
Doug CouplandMen make history and not the other way around. In periods where there is no leadership society stands still. Progress occurs when courageous, skillful leaders seize the opportunity to change things for the better.
Harry S. TrumanAntiquities are history defaced, or some remnants of history which have casually escaped the shipwreck of time.
Francis BaconHistory shows that the majority of people that have done anything great have passed their youth in seclusion.
Thomas CarlyleThose who weep for the happy periods which they encounter in history acknowledge what they want, not the alleviation but the silencing of misery.
Albert CamusMy own view is that taping of conversations for historical purposes was a bad decision on the part of all the presidents. I don't think Kennedy should have done it. I don't think Johnson should have done it and I don't think we should have done it.
Richard M. NixonIn the long history of humankind (and animal kind too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed.
Charles DarwinAnyone who knows anything of history knows that great social changes are impossible without feminine upheaval. Social progress can be measured exactly by the social position of the fair sex, the ugly ones included.
Karl MarxIt is not history which uses men as a means of achieving - as if it were an individual person - its own ends. History is nothing but the activity of men in pursuit of their ends.
Karl MarxHuman history in essence is the history of ideas.
H. G. WellsThe Internet is the most important single development in the history of human communication since the invention of call waiting.
Dave BarryYeah I read history. But it doesn't make you nice. Hitler read history too.
Joan RiversWhat is history but a fable agreed upon?
Napoleon BonaparteBut perhaps the rest of us could have separate classes in science appreciation the wonder of science scientific ways of thinking and the history of scientific ideas rather than laboratory experience.
Richard DawkinsI don't think we handled the aftermath of the fall of Baghdad as well as we might have. But that's now history.
Colin PowellEvery library should try to be complete on something, if it were only the history of pinheads.
Oliver Wendell HolmesIt's cool to be a part of history having two great coaches go head-to-head.
Kobe BryantIf a secret history of books could be written and the author's private thoughts and meanings noted down alongside of his story, how many insipid volumes would become interesting and dull tales excite the reader!
William Makepeace ThackerayWithout question the greatest invention in the history of mankind is beer. Oh I grant you that the wheel was also a fine invention but the wheel does not go nearly as well with pizza.
Dave BarryThis is the lesson that history teaches: repetition.
Gertrude SteinJudging from the main portions of the history of the world so far justice is always in jeopardy.
Walt WhitmanThe history of all previous societies has been the history of class struggles.
Karl MarxTo correct a natural indifference I was placed half-way between misery and the sun. Misery kept me from believing that all was well under the sun and the sun taught me that history wasn't everything.
Albert CamusThe greatest honor history can bestow is that of peacemaker.
Richard M. NixonOne truth stands firm. All that happens in world history rests on something spiritual. If the spiritual is strong it creates world history. If it is weak it suffers world history.
Albert SchweitzerThe writer may very well serve a movement of history as its mouthpiece but he cannot of course create it.
Karl MarxWho has fully realized that history is not contained in thick books but lives in our very blood?
Carl JungOur nation was created in ways that allow human potential to prosper and it created the greatest nation for people in the history of humanity. Now Obama is dismantling it because he has no appreciation for our greatness. In fact he resents it. He blames this country for whatever evils he sees around the world.
Rush LimbaughWell, I think that California has had a history of always spending more money than it takes in.
Arnold SchwarzeneggerHistory books that contain no lies are extremely dull.
Anatole FranceBecoming emancipated at 14 my life wasn't normal. I didn't have to go to school so I didn't. I was rebellious by nature. I spent my 20s focusing on my company Flower Films and producing movies. Now that I'm almost 30 I would like to try other things in lie. I'm crazy about photography and I want to take an art history class.
Drew BarrymoreSooner I'd try to change history than turn political than try convincing others to write letters or to vote or to march or to do something they didn't already feel like doing
Richard BachNothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history, therefore we must be saved by faith.
Reinhold NiebuhrI don't believe in accidents. There are only encounters in history. There are no accidents.
Pablo PicassoThat men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons of history.
Aldous HuxleyLive out of your imagination not your history.
Stephen CoveyNow there are some who would like to rewrite history - revisionist historians is what I like to call them.
George W. BushI'm not one of those who wants to purge our society of our Christian history.
Richard DawkinsThe history of all countries shows that the working class exclusively by its own effort is able to develop only trade-union consciousness.
Vladimir LeninI believe that history might be and ought to be taught in a new fashion so as to make the meaning of it as a process of evolution intelligible to the young.
Thomas HuxleyThere are still many causes worth sacrificing for so much history yet to be made.
Michelle ObamaThere is little for the great part of the history of the world except the bitter tears of pity and the hot tears of wrath.
Woodrow WilsonThe true history of my administration will be written 50 years from now and you and I will not be around to see it.
George W. BushWords when written crystallize history, their very structure gives permanence to the unchangeable past
Francis BaconNo one can take the wealth of the world with him when he dies. This is a truth we have seen throughout the history of mankind.
Sai BabaIf history and science have taught us anything it is that passion and desire are not the same as truth.
E. O. WilsonHistory warns us that it is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies and to end as superstitions.
Thomas HuxleyWhat is history? An echo of the past in the future, a reflex from the future on the past.
Victor HugoAs I speak to you today government censors somewhere are working furiously to erase my words from the records of history. But history itself has already condemned these tactics.
Hillary ClintonRevolutions are the locomotives of history.
Karl MarxNo event in American history is more misunderstood than the Vietnam War. It was misreported then and it is misremembered now.
Richard M. NixonService without ideal of self . . . trains you to transcend all the artificial distinctions imposed by history and geography and to realize that the human community is one and indivisible.
Sai BabaThe soles of Neil Armstrong's boots on the moon made permanent impressions on our souls and in our national psyche. Ann and I watched those steps together on her parent's sofa. Like all Americans we went to bed that night knowing we lived in the greatest country in the history of the world. God bless Neil Armstrong.
Mitt RomneyIn the course of history men come to see that iron necessity is neither iron nor necessary.
Friedrich NietzscheThere certainly are moments in history when poets and painters connect so closely as to be one and the same person
William BlakeThe whole history of the world is summed up in the fact that when nations are strong they are not always just and when they wish to be just they are no longer strong.
Winston ChurchillWhether a woman's running for office or she's supporting her husband who's running for office and she gets criticised for wearing open-toed shoes or for the colour of her coat there's just a lot of history that you bear if you are a woman who puts herself out in the political arena.
Hillary ClintonWe are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases while the citizens may act only by permission, which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history the stage of rule by brute force.
Ayn RandIt is the soothing thing about history that it does repeat itself.
Gertrude SteinNumerous politicians have seized absolute power and muzzled the press. Never in history has the press seized absolute power and muzzled the politicians.
David BrinkleyIt is the true office of history to represent the events themselves together with the counsels and to leave the observations and conclusions thereupon to the liberty and faculty of every man's judgment
Francis BaconWe would like to live as we once lived but history will not permit it.
John F. KennedyThere is nothing new in the world except the history you do not know.
Harry S. TrumanWe've persevered because of a belief we share with the Iraqi people - a belief that out of the ashes of war a new beginning could be born in this cradle of civilization. Through this remarkable chapter in the history of the United States and Iraq we have met our responsibility. Now it's time to turn the page.
Barack ObamaPoetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history since its statements are of nature of universals, whereas those of history are of singulars.
AristotlePsychology keeps trying to vindicate human nature. History keeps undermining the effort.
Mason CooleyI think really China Chinese I think they really have a long history of civilization rich culture.
Dalai LamaPeople who make history know nothing about history. You can see that in the sort of history they make.
Gilbert K. ChestertonThe Chinese government wants me to say that for many centuries Tibet has been part of China. Even if I make that statement many people would just laugh. And my statement will not change past history. History is history.
Dalai LamaMen do not learn much from the lessons of history and that is the most important of all the lessons of history.
Aldous HuxleyIn all history there is no war which was not hatched by the governments the governments alone independent of the interests of the people to whom war is always pernicious even when successful.
Leo TolstoyThe charm of history and its enigmatic lesson consist in the fact that from age to age nothing changes and yet everything is completely different.
Aldous HuxleyI would put our legislative and foreign policy accomplishments in our first two years against any president - with the possible exceptions of Johnson FDR and Lincoln - just in terms of what we've gotten done in modern history. But you know but when it comes to the economy we've got a lot more work to do. And we're gonna keep on at it.
Barack ObamaThe whole history of science has been the gradual realization that events do not happen in an arbitrary manner but that they reflect a certain underlying order which may or may not be divinely inspired.
Stephen HawkingMinimalism seems closest to the sophisticated storytelling of movies. Movies have really educated contemporary audiences to be the most intelligent sophisticated audiences in history. We don't any longer need to have the relationship between one scene and the next explained. We will figure it out ourselves.
Chuck PalahniukIn the richest country in the history of the world this Obama economy has crushed the middle class. Family income has fallen by $4 000 but health insurance premiums are higher food prices are higher utility bills are higher and gasoline prices have doubled. Today more Americans wake up in poverty than ever before.
Mitt RomneyI want to reform the tax code so that it's simple, fair and asks the wealthiest households to pay higher taxes on incomes over $250 000 - the same rate we had when Bill Clinton was president, the same rate we had when our economy created nearly 23 million new jobs, the biggest surplus in history and a lot of millionaires to boot.
Barack ObamaPresident Barack Obama has stood watch over the greatest job loss in modern American history. And that, my friends, is one inconvenient truth that will haunt this President throughout history.
Mitt Romney