How much is history and how much is belief wanting to be history? Howard Jacobson, Christianity: A History s1e1: Jesus the Jew, Channel 4 2009
But yet in Europe I am struck by the opposite: by the absence of history and the knowledge of this chapter of Christian history. Rageh Omaar, Christianity: A History s1e4: Crusades
History remembers kings not soldiers. Troy 2004 starring Brad Pitt & Eric Bana & Orlando Bloom & Rose Byrne & Peter O'Toole & Diane Kruger & Brian Cox & Sean Bean & Julie Christie & Saffron Burrows et al, director Wolfgang Petersen, Agamemnon to Achilles
It’s like all the worst people in history have been brought together in one place. Oh my God, there’s James Last. Red Dwarf s4e6: Meltdown, Lister to Cat, BBC 1991
History is irrelevant. Star Trek: Voyager s6e8: One Small Step, Seven of Nine to Chakotay
People make a grievous error thinking that a list of facts is the truth. Facts are just the bare bones out of which truth is made. Shelby Foote
Narrative history is the kind that comes closest to telling the truth. You can never get to the truth, but that’s your goal. Shelby Foote
The monk Bede was a brilliant scholar and intellectual who wrote the very first history of England. Professor Bettany Hughes, Divine Women III: War of the Word, BBC 2012
History is past politics, and politics is present history. E A Freeman, Methods of Historical Study, 1886
The historian, essentially, wants more documents than he can really use; the dramatist only wants more liberties than he can really take. Henry James, The Aspern Papers
The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history. George Orwell
History repeats itself. Mid-19th century proverb
History ... is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind. (Romans & History) Edward Gibbon, 1737-94, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire ch3
I will not dissemble the first emotions of joy on the recovery of my freedom, and, perhaps, the establishment of my fame. But my pride was soon humbled, and a sober melancholy was spread over my mind, by the idea that I had taken an everlasting leave of an old and agreeable companion, and that whatsoever might be the future day of my History, the life of the historian must be short and precarious. Edward Gibbon, on completion of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
There is properly no history; only biography. Ralph Waldo Emerson
Isn’t history ultimately the result of our fear of boredom? Emile M Cioran
History is full of people with bright ideas. James Burke, Connections s2e14: Bright Ideas, BBC 1994
Don’t forget your history nor your destiny. Bob Marley
History is nothing more than the belief in the senses, the belief in falsehood. Friedrich Nietzsche
All history is man’s efforts to realise ideals. Eamon de Valera
History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake. James Joyce, Ulysses
History is not was, it is. William Faulkner
History cannot be permanently falsified; the myth cannot stand up to the scrutiny of research; the sinister web will be brought into the light and torn to pieces, however artfully it has been spun. Dr Jakob Ruchti
History is a pack of lies we play to the dead. Voltaire
History is nothing more than a tableau of crimes and misfortunes. Voltaire
And even I can remember
A day when the historians left blanks in their writings,
I mean for things they didn’t know. Ezra Pound, Draft of XXX Cantos, 1930
So, while the light fails
On a winter’s afternoon, in a secluded chapel
History is now and England. T S Eliot, Four Quartets: ‘Little Gidding’
You come out of Gone With the Wind feeling that history isn’t so disturbing after all. One can always make a dress out of a curtain. Dilys Powell, Independent on Sunday 29th April 1990
What experience and history teach is this – that nations and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted upon any lessons they might have drawn from it. G W F Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of World History
In history, we are concerned with what has been and what is; in philosophy, however, we are concerned not with what belongs exclusively to the past or to the future, but with that which is, both now and eternally – in short, with reason. ibid.
What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of man’s ideological evolution and the universalism of Western liberal democracy. Francis Fukuyama, cited Independent 20th September 1989
We study history that we may be wise before the event ... Students of political science ought to be able to foresee, at least in outline, the event while it is still future. J R Seeley, The Expansion of England, 1883
Hardly a pure science, history is closer to animal husbandry than it is to mathematics, in that it involves selective breeding. The principal difference between the husbandryman and the historian is that the former breeds sheep or cows or such, and the latter breeds (assumed) facts. The husbandryman uses his skills to enrich the future; the historian uses his to enrich the past. Both are usually up to their ankles in bullshit. Tim Robbins, Another Roadside Attraction, 1990
History is a combination of reality and lies. The reality of history becomes a lie. The unreality of the fable becomes the truth. Jean Cocteau, 1889-1963
I had no idea that history was being made. I was just tired of giving up. Rosa Parks
The world’s history is the world’s judgement. Friedrich von Schiller, Resignation, 1786
Great abilities are no requisite for an historian … imagination is not required in any high degree. Samuel Johnson
It is not the kings and generals that make history but the masses of the people. Nelson Mandella
The most difficult problem in personal knowledge, whether of oneself or of others, is the problem of guessing when to think as a historian and when to think as an anthropologist. W H Auden
Man is a history-making creature who can neither repeat his past nor leave it behind. W H Auden, The Dyer’s Hand, 1963
There is no history of mankind, there are only many histories of all kinds of aspects of human life. And one of these is the history of political power. This is elevated into the history of the world. Karl Popper, The Open Society and its Enemies, 1945
The ordinary routines of life are never chronicled by the historian, but they make up almost the whole of experience. Peter Ackroyd, Foundation
None of it seemed very real, but I suppose that’s the trouble with history. It’s the one thing we have to make up for ourselves. Peter Ackroyd, Chatterton