History Quotes - Page 5

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.

Those who understand history are condemned to watch other idiots repeat it.

The aim of science is to discover and illuminate truth. And that, I take it, is the aim of literature, whether biography or history... It seems to me, then, that there can be no separate literature of science.

Learning the truth has become my life's love.

My choice of Muhammad to lead the list of the world's most influential persons may surprise some readers and may be questioned by others, but he was the only man in history who was supremely successful on both the religious and secular level.

History was a series of decisions about what to tell and a series of accidents about what survived after telling. Not truth, but a historian could search for truth, and the search was as worthy as any other human activity.

I tell you, lad, that men will believe is one says, "The Gods say..." They will believe if one says, "I had a Vision..." They will believe if one says, "It was told me on a tablet of hidden gold..." But, if one says, "History teaches," then they will not believe.

Sometimes when you get older - and I'm not talking about you, I'm talking generally, because everyone ages differently - things you think on and wish on start to seem real. And then you believe them, and before you know it they're a part of your history, and if someone challenges you on them and says they're not true - why, then you get offended.

So obscure are the greatest events, as some take for granted any hearsay, whatever its source, others turn truth into falsehood, and both errors find encouragement with posterity.

If history is written by the victorious, what if the victors lied?

The truth is usually left for us to hunt and gather independently, if we are so inclined.

History engineered if the facts couldn't be generally accepted.

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?

Since history is not an objective reality, but only an imaginative reconstruction of vanished events, the pattern that appears useful and agreeable to one generation is never entirely so to the next.

God was never created the economy.
Men found it after banished from Eden.

In history, truth should be held sacred, at whatever cost . . . especially against the narrow and futile patriotism, which, instead of pressing forward in pursuit of truth, takes pride in walking backwards to cover the slightest nakedness of our forefathers.

Physics advances by accepting absurdities. Its history is one of unbelievable ideas proving to be true.

The student of history knows no more refreshing recreation than that of nailing liars, like vermin, to the wall.

There were three things sought by invaders who crossed
oceans to discover America. Those were gold, gospel, glory.
There are four things sought by aliens who crossed heavens
to discover planet earth. Those are gold, gospel, glory, gene.

Selfrighteous creates wars more often than other reasons.