A generation which ignores history has no past and no future.
A land without ruins is a land without memories — a land without memories is a land without history.
A page of history is worth a pound of logic.
An account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools.
And having wisdom with each studious year, in meditation dwelt, with learning wrought, and shaped his weapon with an edge severe, sapping a solemn creed with solemn sneer.
Anybody can make history. Only a great man can write it.
Caesar had perished from the world of men, had not his sword been rescued by his pen.
Every library should try to be complete on something, if it were only the history of pinheads.
Every time history repeats itself the price goes up.
Fable is more historical than fact, because fact tells us about one man and fable tells us about a million men.
Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history.
Few will have the greatness to bend history itself; but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total; of all those acts will be written the history of this generation.
For historians ought to be precise, truthful, and quite unprejudiced, and neither interest nor fear, hatred nor affection, should cause them to swerve from the path of truth, whose mother is history, the rival of time, the depository of great actions, the witness of what is past, the example and instruction of the present, the monitor of the future.
For my part, I consider that it will be found much better by all parties to leave the past to history, especially as I propose to write that history myself.
From the heights of these pyramids, forty centuries look down on us.
God cannot alter the past, but historians can.
Great abilities are not requisite for an Historian; for in historical composition, all the greatest powers of the human mind are quiescent. He has facts ready to his hand; so there is no exercise of invention. Imagination is not required in any degree; only about as much as is used in the lowest kinds of poetry. Some penetration, accuracy, and coloring, will fit a man for the task, if he can give the application which is necessary.
He is the purest figure in history. [About George Washington]
Historian — an unsuccessful novelist.
Historian. A broad — gauge gossip.