History Quotes

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

"The age of heroes is dead. The age of the gods has failed."

"The history of science is largely the history of correcting yesterday's certainties."

"Those who refuse to learn from history are condemned to repeat its greatest mistakes."

"The past shapes the future through laws we are still discovering."

"History is the teacher we ignore at our peril, then repeat its lessons painfully."

"History repeats itself because we were not listening the first time."

"All that was great in the past was ridiculed, condemned, combated, suppressed — only to be reconsidered in present, and to be admired by posterity."

"If you want to know the future, look at the past."

"He who will not learn from history is doomed to repeat it."

"History repeats not because we forget, but because we refuse to listen."

"History is written by survivors; wisdom comes from understanding the rest."

"The archive is never complete; history is always being written."

"We are all touched by the hands of the past."

"The past is never past; it haunts the present."

"To be alive is to be caught in the web of history."

"All that was great in the past was ridiculed, condemned, combated, suppressed—only to be reconsidered in tolerant ages."

"To think about the history of the world is to see that mankind has often acted on the presumptions which later proved to be false."

"The very first requirement in a historian is that he shall be trustworthy."

"The time will come when it will be thought wonderful that we believed such things about our ancestors."

"The archive reveals what was deemed worth remembering and what was allowed to be forgotten."

"The archive is never neutral; it is always an act of power and selection."

"The nation depends on forgetting; it cannot afford to remember all its violences."

"We cannot think about sexuality apart from colonialism and empire."

"The archive shapes what appears as historical truth and what is relegated to forgetting."

"We live in the traces of others."

"The archive is always incomplete."

"History teaches those willing to listen; it repeats for those who do not."

"History repeats not because we refuse to learn, but because we refuse to change."

"History is not a linear progression but a contested terrain."