History quotes
1.6K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Explore further
Browse quotes that often appear alongside history — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"To all those who have suffered as a consequence of our troubled past I extend my sincere thoughts and deep sympathy. With the benefit of historical hindsight we can all see things which we would wish had been done differently or not at all."
"History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake."
"Civilization is a limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities."
"The people, and the people alone, are the motive force in the making of world history."
"The wisdom of hindsight, so useful to historians and indeed to authors of memoirs, is sadly denied to practicing politicians."
"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."
"Too often in recent history liberal governments have been wrecked on rocks of loose fiscal policy."
"That's what hell must be like, small chat to the babbling of Lethe about the good old days when we wished we were dead."
"Only strong personalities can endure history, the weak are extinguished by it."
"I am the dream and the hope of the slave"
"Dictionaries are like watches, the worst is better than none and the best cannot be expected to go quite true."
"The story of the African-American people is the story of the settlement and growth of America itself, a universal tale that all people should experience."
"The main thing is to make history, not to write it."
"Men make their own history"
"When we build, let us think that we build forever. Let it not be for present delight nor for our use alone. Let it be such work as our descendants will look upon with praise and thanksgiving in their hearts."
"Posterity! You will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom! I hope you will make a good use of it."
"Tragedy is a tool for the living to gain wisdom, not a guide by which to live."
"The most shocking fact about war is that its victims and its instruments are individual human beings, and that these individual beings are condemned by the monstrous conventions of politics to murder or be murdered in quarrels not their own."
"A large part of the popularity and persuasiveness of psychology comes from its being a sublimated spiritualism: a secular, ostensibly scientific way of affirming the primacy of "spirit" over matter."
"Equilibrium is the profoundest tendency of all human activity."
