One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say.
Societies that do not eat people are fascinated by those that do.
To give an accurate description of what has never occurred is not merely the proper occupation of the historian, but the inalienable privilege of any man of parts and culture.
Herodotus says, "Very few things happen at the right time, and the rest do not happen at all: the conscientious historian will correct these defects.
I have no history but the length of my bones.
War makes rattling good history but Peace is poor reading.
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
We should keep the Panama Canal. After all we stole it fair and square.
History is a pact between the dead the living and the yet unborn.
The game of history is usually played by the best and the worst over the heads of the majority in the middle.
Writers and other artists are mostly just historians, produced by nature to describe, decipher and thus historically represent the universe.
History n: an account mostly false of events mostly unimportant which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves and soldiers mostly fools.
It is pleasant to be transferred from an office where one is afraid of a sergeant-major into an office where one can intimidate generals and perhaps this is why history is so attractive to the more t...
The past is a foreign country they do things differently there.
It was always the best way of finding out information; just go and ask a woman who keeps her eyes and ears open and who likes to talk. It always worked. It was no use asking men; they simply were not...
The history of the world is the record of a man in quest of his daily bread and butter.
Most history is a record of the triumphs disasters and follies of top people. The black hole in it is the way of life of mute inglorious men and women who made no nuisance of themselves in the world...
Noble acts and momentous events happen in the same way and produce the same impression as the ordinary facts.
In essence the renaissance is simply the green end of one of civilization's hardest winters.
That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that History has to teach.