Most of the great triumphs and tragedies of history are caused not by people being fundamentally good or fundamentally evil, but by people being fundamentally people.
—Terry Pratchett
I'm recording our history now on the bedroom wall, / And when we leave the landlord will come and paint over it all.
—Ani DiFranco
History is filled with the sound of silken slippers going downstairs and wooden shoes coming up.
—Voltaire
History is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind.
—Edward Gibbon
History is the witness that testifies to the passing of time; it illumines reality, vitalizes memory, provides guidance in daily life and brings us tidings of antiquity.
—Cicero
History is more or less bunk. It's tradition. We don't want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker's dam is the history we made today.
—Henry Ford
For four-fifths of our history, our planet was populated by pond scum.
—J. W. Schopf
History never looks like history when you are living through it.
—John W. Gardner
If you write a post and put it on a blog, that's a historical document. If you change your template, then that entry looks completely different. It's the same words, but not the same meaning. This all depends on what historical questions that people will be asking and we can't know what they will want.
—Josh Greenberg
History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon.
—Napoleon Bonaparte
Some people make headlines while others make history.
—Philip Elmer-DeWitt
Want of foresight, unwillingness to act when action would be simple and effective, lack of clear thinking, confusion of counsel until the emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong-these are the features which constitute the endless repetition of history.
—Winston Churchill
As one reads history… one is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed, but by the punishments that the good have inflicted; and a community is infinitely more brutalized by the habitual employment of punishment than it is by the occasional occurrence of crime.
—Oscar Wilde
History develops, art stands still.
—E. M. Forster
Letting go means to come to the realization that some people are a part of your history, but not a part of your destiny.
—Steve Maraboli