Quotes: History, Historian

The idea in bold-face print is a summary of the quote. The number after the topic is the page on which the quote was found.

Historian, History
Historian 106 "The historian is a prophet looking backwards." Schlegel. German. Dictionary of Foreign Terms

History 320 History didn't get any worse than Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel. They that say the world grows worse and worse are very much mistaken, for Adam who had but one commandment to keep broke that and Cain slew his brother Abel when there was but two of them to share the whole world. Samuel Butler I. 1660-80. Gross, ed. Oxford Book of Aphorisms.

History 321 "The certainties of one age are the problems of the next." R. H. Tawney. 1926. Gross, ed. Oxford Book of Aphorisms.

History 321 Fashions repeat themselves. "The novelties of one generation are only the resuscitated fashions of the generation before last." George Bernard Shaw. 1900. Gross, ed. Oxford Book of Aphorisms.

History 322 People do not remember the past, they think of it in terms of their own experience. They try to figure out the future by analogizing it with the past. They are imagining the past and remembering the future. "One would expect people to remember the past and to imagine the future; but in fact, when discoursing or writing about history, they imagine it in terms of their own experience, and when trying to gauge the future they cite supposed analogies from the past: till, by a double process of repetition, they imagine the past and remember the future." Sir Lewis Namier. 1942. Gross, ed. Oxford Book of Aphorisms.

History 322 "The further you get away from any period the better you can write about it; you are not subject to interruptions by people that were there." Finley Peter Dunne, Mr. Dooley. 1919. (Spelling corrected.) Gross, ed. Oxford Book of Aphorisms.

History 322 We can't write history either because we have too few sources in the distant past or, in recent times, too many. "It is impossible to write ancient history because we do not have enough sources and impossible to write modern history because we have far too many." Charles Peguy. 1905-12. Gross, ed. Oxford Book of Aphorisms.

History 323 History is not fit to be read by children because it is too criminal and pathological; they should learn about heroes and villains from fiction. "Political history is far too criminal and pathological to be a fit subject of study for the young; children should acquire their heroes and villains from fiction." W. H. Auden. 1971. Gross, ed. Oxford Book of Aphorisms.

History 323 Whatever we can imagine, happened in the past or will happen in the future. "Imagination itself can scarcely feign any calamity so great that it has not been realized in the past or present history of the human race, or may not be realized in the future." Leopardi. 1824-32. Gross, ed. Oxford Book of Aphorisms.

History 323 Whatever has been imagined in the most disordered of imaginations has happened. "Everything which could possibly enter into the most disordered of imaginations might well be said of the history of the world." Dostoevsky. 1864. Gross, ed. Oxford Book of Aphorisms.

History 324 "…history is the study of other people’s mistakes." Philip Guedalla. 1920. Gross, ed. Oxford Book of Aphorisms.

History 324 What is funny today wasn't funny when it first happened. "What is amusing now had to be taken in desperate earnest once." Virginia Woolf. 1929. Gross, ed. Oxford Book of Aphorisms.

History 324 324 We can't measure a past age by our own. "We are not to measure the feelings of one age by those of another; had [Isaac] Walton lived in our day, he would have been the first to cry out against the cruelty of angling." Hazlitt. 1823. Gross, ed. Oxford Book of Aphorisms.

History 324 People died for causes that now are as dead as they are. "Throughout history the world has been laid waste to ensure the triumph of conceptions that are now as dead as the men that died for them." Henry De Motherlant. 1930-44. Gross, ed. Oxford Book of Aphorisms.

History 324 When we look at the politics of the past, we wonder that anyone would have any interest in them. But we're interested in the politics of today. "Reflect on things past, as wars, negotiations, factions, and the like; we enter so little into those interests, that we wonder how men could possibly be so busy and concerned for things so transitory: Look on the present times, we find the same humor, yet wonder not at all." Swift. 1711. Gross, ed. Oxford Book of Aphorisms.

History 324 Ideas take a long time to mature. "Countless things that humanity acquired in earlier stages, but so feebly and embryonically that no one could perceive this acquisition, suddenly emerge into the light much later—perhaps after centuries…strong and ripe." Nietzsche. 1882-7. Gross, ed. Oxford Book of Aphorisms.

History 325 History has no denouement. "History is a drama without a dénouement." Peter Geyl. 1963. Gross, ed. Oxford Book of Aphorisms.

History 136 "We learn from history that we do not learn from history." Hegel. Portable Curmudgeon.

History 59 Women are at the root of all history. "The labial interpretation of history." Mailer, The Naked and the Dead.