Top 100 History Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live up to what light I have.”

— Abraham Lincoln

52. “Houston, Tranquillity Base here. The Eagle has landed.”

— Neil Armstrong

53. “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.”

— L.P. Hartley

54. “Don’t worry when you are not recognized, but strive to be worthy of recognition.”

— Abraham Lincoln

55. “The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.”

— Winston Churchill

56. “There are but two powers in the world, the sword and the mind. In the long run the sword is always beaten by the mind.”

— Napoleon

57. “I have been driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go. My own wisdom and that of all about me seemed insufficient for that day.”

— Abraham Lincoln

58. “It is better to offer no excuse than a bad one.”

— George Washington

59. “We are either kings or pawns of men.”

— Napoleon

60. “History is not was, it is.”

— William Faulkner

61. “Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets.”

— Napoleon

62. “History never repeats itself. Man always does.”

— Voltaire

63. “History does not belong to us; we belong to it.”

— Hans-Georg Gadamer

64. “If all human beings understood history, they might cease making the same stupid mistakes over and over.”

— Isaac Asimov

65. “If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten.”

— Rudyard Kipling

66. “History is an argument without end.”

— Pieter Geyl

67. “History is merely a list of surprises. It can only prepare us to be surprised yet again.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

68. “History is, strictly speaking, the study of questions; the study of answers belongs to anthropology and sociology.”

— W.H. Auden

69. “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

— William Faulkner

70. “You can’t be neutral on a moving train.”

— Howard Zinn

71. “I never see what has been done; I only see what remains to be done.”

— Marie Curie

72. “Don’t confuse the truth with the opinion of the majority.”

— Jean Cocteau

73. “History always has a few tricks up its frayed sleeve. It’s been around a long time.”

— Terry Pratchett

74. “He who cannot draw on three thousand years is living from hand to mouth.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

75. “There is no history of how bad became better.”

— Henry David Thoreau

76. “The greatest historian should also be a great moralist. It is no proof of impartiality to treat wickedness and goodness on the same level.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

77. “First of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself – nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

78. “The very ink with which history is written is merely fluid prejudice.”

— Mark Twain

79. “History is a cyclic poem written by time upon the memories of man.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

80. “The world we see that seems so insane is the result of a belief system that is not working. To perceive the world differently, we must be willing to change our belief system, let the past slip away, expand our sense of now, and dissolve the fear in our minds.”

— William James

81. “Happy people have no history.”

— Leo Tolstoy

82. “Only a good-for-nothing is not interested in his past.”

— Sigmund Freud

83. “You must always know the past, for there is no real Was, there is only Is.”

— William Faulkner

84. “History is a bath of blood.”

— William James

85. “All history was at first oral.”

— Samuel Johnson

86. “All our knowledge is symbolic.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

87. “History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.”

— James Joyce

88. “The revolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe. You have to make it fall.”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

89. “If we had a keen vision of all that is ordinary in human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow or the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which is the other side of silence.”

— George Eliot

90. “Forgiveness is a virtue of the brave.”

— Indira Gandhi

91. “We had to do what we had to do – Britain is great again.”

— Margaret Thatcher

92. “Never, ever rest on your laurels. Today’s laurels are tomorrow’s compost.”

— Tom Peters

93. “Nobody can have the consolations of religion or philosophy unless he has first experienced their desolations.”

— Aldous Huxley

94. “Do what you will, this world’s a fiction and is made up of contradiction.”

— William Blake

95. “Why should we honour those that die upon the field of battle? A man may show as reckless a courage in entering into the abyss of himself.”

— William Butler Yeats

96. “The future has a way of arriving unannounced.”

— George F. Will

97. “Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty.”

— Frank Herbert

98. “If we are to achieve a richer culture, rich in contrasting values, we must recognize the whole gamut of human potentialities, and so weave a less arbitrary social fabric, one in which each diverse human gift will find a fitting place.”

— Margaret Mead

99. “All daring and courage, all iron endurance of misfortune-make for a finer, nobler type of manhood.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

100. “Purely historical thought is nihilistic; it wholeheartedly accepts the evil of history.”

— Albert Camus