History Quotes - Page 23

The passion for tidiness is the historian's occupational disease.

For history is to the nation as memory is to the individual.

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

History is a novel for which the people is the author.

History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies.

It is thus necessary that the individual should finally come to realize that his own ego is of no importance in comparison with the existence of the nation, that the position of the individual is conditioned solely by the interests of the nation as a whole.

Every generation tailors history to its taste.

History is but the polemics of the victor.

Failure is impossible.

A decent provision for the poor is the true test of civilization.

Racism is an ism to which everyone in the world today is exposed; for or against, we must take sides. And the history of the future will differ according to the decision which we make.

Every word I say, you can document it and put it in the history books.

We boast our emancipation from many superstitions; but if we have broken any idols, it is through a transfer of idolatry.

If the only time you think of me as a scientist is during Black History Month, then I must not be doing my job as a scientist.

It would strike me as ridiculous to want to doubt the existence of Napoleon; but if someone doubted the existence of the earth 150years ago, perhaps I should be more willing to listen, for now he is doubting our whole system of evidence.

The use of history is to tell us what we are, for at our birth we are nearly empty vessels and we become what our tradition pours into us.

I will not take 'but' for an answer. Negroes have been looking at democracy's 'but' too long.

There is no history, only histories.

History repeats itself, but the special call of an art which has passed away is never reproduced. It is as utterly gone out of the world as the song of a destroyed wild bird.

Not all that is presented to us as history has really happened; and what really happened did not actually happen the way it is presented to us; moreover, what really happened is only a small part of all that happened. Everything in history remains uncertain, the largest events as well as the smallest occurrence.

History, sir, will tell lies as usual.

All life is related. And it enables us to construct with confidence the complex tree that represents the history of life

We feel more emotion... before an amateur photograph linked to our own life history than before the work of a Great Photographer, because his domain partakes of art, and the intent of the souvenir-object remains at the lower level of personal history.

It is best to erase all personal history because that would make us free from the encumbering thoughts of other people

There is only one way of victory over the bitterness and rage that comes naturally to us--To will what God wills brings peace.