History is not just names and dates — it is the story of how we got here and a warning about where we might be headed. These quotes look at the past with curiosity, respect, and the awareness that those who ignore it tend to repeat it.
“I graduated from the University of Delaware with a double major in history and political science.”
“I think the Democrats are catering to them, but, you know, in the entire history of the United States of America, there has never been a judge who has been refused a vote when there was a majority of Senators willing to vote for his confirmation, never in history.”
“Man is not logical and his intellectual history is a record of mental reserves and compromises. He hangs on to what he can in his old beliefs even when he is compelled to surrender their logical basis.”
“The UK is not going to leave the European Union. Of course not. We are inextricably wound up with Europe. In terms of culture, history and geography, we are a European nation.”
“We would like to live as we once lived, but history will not permit it.”
“The man who is swimming against the stream knows the strength of it.”
“History offers no evidence for the proposition that the assignment of women to military combat jobs is the way to win wars, improve combat readiness, or promote national security.”
“Life isn't meant to be easy. It's hard to take being on the top - or on the bottom. I guess I'm something of a fatalist. You have to have a sense of history, I think, to survive some of these things... Life is one crisis after another.”
“More people have more access to more readers for less money than ever before in history. It means a lot of dross but it means a lot of very talented people can find and nurture a readership in ways that were not possible twenty years ago. From a creative perspective, that is all that writing is about.”
“The general consensus among historians, among the ones who can handle the fact that 'Lincoln' is, in fact, historical fiction, is that we demonstrate enormous fidelity to history and that, beyond that, we've actually contributed a line of thinking about Lincoln's presidency that's somewhat original.”
“We have a harder way to succeed in life as Serbs because of the past that we had and because of the history we had.”
“To those who have chosen the profession of medicine, a knowledge of chemistry, and of some branches of natural history, and, indeed, of several other departments of science, affords useful assistance.”
“Never throughout history has a man who lived a life of ease left a name worth remembering.”
“A library is the delivery room for the birth of ideas, a place where history comes to life.”
“For most of our history, no one dared to tell Americans, 'you don't build that.'”
“Stonehenge was built possibly by the Minoans. It presents one of man's first attempts to order his view of the outside world.”