33 Remarkable Quotes From History

Throughout the annals of history, certain quotes have transcended time, capturing the essence of pivotal moments and timeless wisdom. These words, spoken by influential figures from diverse backgrounds, have the power to inspire, motivate, and provoke thought. In this collection, we have curated 33 remarkable quotes that continue to resonate, providing insight and inspiration for the challenges and triumphs of today. Join us as we delve into these powerful expressions that have left an indelible mark on history.

1. “If reason ruled the world would history even exist?” - Ryszard Kapuściński

2. “History never repeats itself, historians do.” - Lee Benson

3. “The Revolution introduced me to art, and in turn, art introduced me to the Revolution!” - Albert Einstein

4. “[N]icht durch Reden und Majoritätsbeschlüsse werden die großen Fragen der Zeit entschiedenen [...] sondern durch Eisen und Blut.” - Otto Bismarck

5. “In inventing [General Juan Manuel de] Rosas’ self-justification, I have taken the liberty of drawing almost exclusively on the words of Tony Blair, and the various self-justifications he produced to defend his foreign policy adventures with George Bush in the Middle East and the Central Asia.” - Harry Thompson

6. “Horror is the natural reaction to the last 5,000 years of history.” - Robert Anton Wilson

7. “For the anarch, things are not so simple, especially when he has a background in history. If he remains free of being ruled, whether by sovereigns or by society, this does not mean that he refuses to serve in any way. In general, he serves no worse than anyone else, and sometimes even better, if he likes the game. He only holds back from the pledge, the sacrifice, the ultimate devotion. These are issues of metaphysical integrity....” - Ernst Jünger

8. “The anarch knows the rules. He has studied them as a historian and goes along with them as a contemporary. Wherever possible, he plays his own game within their framework; this makes the fewest waves.” - Ernst Jünger

9. “.إن كان التاريخ صادقاً ، فيمكن أن يكون كاذباً و مضللاً بالقدر ذاته” - هاني نقشبندي

10. “We can learn from history, but we can also deceive ourselves when we selectively take evidence from the past to justify what we have already made up our minds to do.” - Margaret MacMillan

11. “It follows that the one thing we should not do to the men and women of past time, and particularly if they ghost through to us as larger than life, is to take them out of their historical contexts. To do so is to run the risk of turning them into monsters, whom we can denounce for our (frequently political) motives—an insidious game, because we are condemning in their make-up that which is likely to belong to a whole social world, the world that helped to fashion them and that is deviously reflected or distorted in them. Censure of this sort is the work of petty moralists and propagandists, not historians (p. 5).” - Lauro Martines

12. “In 1922 everything changed again. The Eskimo pie was invented; James Joyce's Ulysses was printed in Paris; snow fell on Mauna Loa, Hawaii; Babe Ruth signed a three-year contract with the New York Yankees; Eugene O'Neill was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama; Frederick Douglass's home was dedicated as a national shrine; former heavyweight champion of the world Jack Johnson invented the wrench...” - Bernice L. McFadden

13. “The whole of world history often seems to me nothing more than a picture book which portrays humanity's most powerful and a senseless desire - the desire to forget. Does not each generation, by means of suppression, concealment, and ridicule, efface what the previous generation considered most important?” - Hermann Hesse

14. “...history is a selection process - it chooses moments and events, and even people - it hands them a situation that they shouldn't be able to overcome, and it's in those moments, in that fight, that people find out who they are.” - Brad Meltzer

15. “As never before, he understood the vitality of tradition, the dignity of the worship of what had existed before one's own self had come into being. There was no shame in awe; there was exaltation. (“Cafe Endless: Spring Rain”)” - Nancy Holder

16. “What better way for a ruling class to claim and hold power than to pose as the defenders of the nation.” - Christopher Hitchens

17. “Forgiveness is the only way to reverse the irreversible flow of history.” - Hannah Arendt

18. “There’s this thing called progress. But it doesn’t progress, it doesn’t go anywhere. Because as progress progresses the world can slip away. It’s progress if you can stop the world slipping away. My humble model for progress is the reclamation of land. Which is repeatedly, never-endingly retrieving what is lost. A dogged, vigilant business. A dull yet valuable business. A hard, inglorious business. But you shouldn’t go mistaking the reclamation of land for the building of empires.” - Graham Swift

19. “In 1914, Franz Ferdinand, the Austrian imperial heir, was shot and killed by a Serbian nationalist in Sarajevo. Do you know the motive behind the act?It was in retaliation for the subjugation of the Sebs in Austria.It was not.Franz Ferdinand had stated his intention to introduce reforms favorable to the Serbs in his empire. Had he survived to ascend the throne, he would have made a revolution unnecessary. In plain terms, he was killed because he was going to give the rebels what they were shouting for. They needed a despot in the palace in order to seize it.What's good for reform is bad for the reformers” - Loren D. Estleman

20. “He knew by heart every last minute crack on its surface. He had made maps of the ceiling and gone exploring on them; rivers, islands, and continents. He had made guessing games of it and discovered hidden objects; faces, birds, and fishes. He made mathematical calculations of it and rediscovered his childhood; theorems, angles, and triangles. There was practically nothing else he could do but look at it. He hated the sight of it.” - Josephine Tey

21. “Every moment happens twice: inside and outside, and they are two different histories.” - zadie smith

22. “There is some history that I want not to have happened. I resist the consequences of being Nemesis.” - Wallace Stegner

23. “Ainsi dans le faste ostenstatoire d'une dernière cérémonie, le bourgeois, laissant à ses fils un héritage plus riche que celui qu'il a reçu de son père, quite ce monde où il a conu au moins deux grands sources de joie, la fortune et la vanité...Thus in the ostentatious pomp of a last ceremony, the bourgeois, leaving his sons a richer heritage than he has received from his own father, departs from this world where he has known at least two great sources of joy, the fortune and the vanity...” - Georges Mongredien

24. “Whenever anyone tells me that history's boring, I bring up Napoleon's penis.” - Tony Perrottet

25. “I'd rather be a pessimist because then I can only be pleasantly surprised.” - ben franklin

26. “Beyond all sciences, philosophies, theologies, and histories, a child's relentless inquiry is truly all it takes to remind us that we don't know as much as we think we know.” - Criss Jami

27. “What history can do is show that people have to take responsibility for what they activate out of their tradition. It’s not just a given thing one slavishly follows. You have to be accountable.” - Karen L. King

28. “We live in a moment in which old conflicts, much altered during their subterraneous years, have boiled up again. The struggle to own the past so that it can be made to serve contemporary interests has led to gross distortions. But it is true also that the experience of any generation is inevitably a warped lens through which to view the thought and the actions of any previous generation, especially when there is a lack of rigorous historical perspective to correct for these distortions. This second consideration may go some way toward explaining the fact that there are not two sides to what would otherwise be a great national controversy.” - Marilynne Robinson

29. “It is easy to sanctify policies or identities by the deaths of victims. It is less appealing, but morally more urgent, to understand the actions of the perpetrators. The moral danger, after all, is never that one might become a victim but that one might be a perpetrator or a bystander.” - Timothy Snyder

30. “My fight isn’t so simple, it has very deep roots, from long ago, from earlier generations. Life weighs on me with the weight of my family history, my genes drag along a race of sons of plenty and sons of bitches who with a blade of a machete cleared the pathways of life. They’re still doing it. They ate with the machete, they worked, they shaved, killed, and settled differences with their wives with machete. Today the machete is a shotgun, a nine-millimeter, a chopper. The weapon has changed but not its use. The story has changed, too, has become terrifying. Once proud, we are now ashamed, without understanding how, why, and when it all happened. We don’t know how long our history is, but we can feel its weight.” - Jorge Franco

31. “History repeats itself. Historians repeat each other."[1880]” - Max Beerbohm

32. “Truly a good horse, good ground to gallop on, and sunshine, make up the sum of enjoyable travelling.” - Isabella L. Bird

33. “The more I learn, the more I yearn.” - Aaron B. Powell