The Quotes canon
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Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Karl Marx4 quotes
The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. — Karl Marx · 1848Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. — Karl Marx · 1852What I did that was new was to prove... That the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat. — Karl Marx · 1852History is not, as it were, a person apart, using man as a means to achieve its own aims; history is nothing but the activity of man pursuing his aims. — Karl Marx · 1845Cicero2 quotes
To be ignorant of what happened before you were born is to be ever a child. — Cicero · 46 BCHistory 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 · 55 BCJulian Barnes2 quotes
History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation. — Julian Barnes · 2011Does history repeat itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce? No, that's too grand, too considered a process. History just burps, and we taste again that raw-onion sandwich it swallowed centuries ago. — Julian Barnes · 1989Leo Tolstoy2 quotes
The subject of history is the life of peoples and of humanity. To catch and pin down in words-that is, to describe directly the life, not only of humanity, but even of a single people, appears to be impossible. — Leo Tolstoy · 1869In historical events great men-so called-are but labels serving to give a name to the event, and like labels they have the least possible connection with the event itself. — Leo Tolstoy · 1869Thomas Carlyle2 quotes
The history of the world is but the biography of great men. — Thomas Carlyle · 1840History is the essence of innumerable Biographies. — Thomas Carlyle · 1830A.J.P. Taylor1 quote
Human blunders, however, usually, do more to shape history than human wickedness. — A.J.P. Taylor · 1961Abba Eban1 quote
History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives. — Abba Eban · 1970Aldous Huxley1 quote
That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach. — Aldous Huxley · 1956Alexis de Tocqueville1 quote
At every step the natural light which illuminates their path grows dimmer and less secure; and that, in spite of all their efforts, they have as yet only discovered a small number of conflicting notions, on which the mind of man has been tossed about for thousands of years, without either laying a firmer grasp on truth, or finding novelty even in its errors. — Alexis de Tocqueville · 1840Aristotle1 quote
So poetry is something more philosophical and more worthy of serious attention than history, for while poetry is concerned with universal truth, history treats of particular facts. — Aristotle · 335 BCBertolt Brecht1 quote
Who built the Thebes of the seven gates?
In the books you will find the names of kings.
Did the kings haul up the lumps of rock?...
Where, the evening that the wall of China was finished
Did the masons go? — Bertolt Brecht · 1936Carl Sagan1 quote
Human history can be viewed as a slowly dawning awareness that we are members of a larger group. Initially our loyalties were to ourselves and our immediate family, next, to bands of wandering hunter-gatherers, then to tribes, small settlements, city-states, nations. We have broadened the circle of those we love... If we are to survive, our loyalties must be broadened further, to include the whole human community, the entire planet Earth. — Carl Sagan · 1980Dave Chappelle1 quote
John F. Kennedy. Remember him? He fucked Marilyn Monroe. Matter of fact, him and his brother Bobby fucked Marilyn Monroe. And history doesn’t talk about that much. You know why history doesn’t talk about that much? Because those two pages in history are stuck together. — Dave Chappelle · 2000Edmund Burke1 quote
People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors. — Edmund Burke · 1790Edward Gibbon1 quote
History...is, indeed, little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind. — Edward Gibbon · 1776George Eliot1 quote
History, we know, is apt to repeat itself. — George Eliot · 1857George Orwell1 quote
History is written by the winners. — George Orwell · 1944George Santayana1 quote
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. — George Santayana · 1905Gerald Brenan1 quote
You can't get at the truth by writing history; only the novelist can do that. — Gerald Brenan · 1986Gerald White Johnson1 quote
Nothing changes more constantly that the past; for the past that influences our lives does not consist of what actually happened, but what men believe happened. — Gerald White Johnson · 1943H.A.L. Fisher1 quote
Men wiser and more learned than I have discerned in history a plot, a rhythm, a predetermined pattern. These harmonies are concealed from me. I can see only one emergency following upon another as wave follows upon wave. — H.A.L. Fisher · 1935Henry Ford1 quote
History is more or less bunk. — Henry Ford · 1916Henry Kissinger1 quote
The history of things that didn’t happen has never been written. — Henry Kissinger · 1972James Joyce1 quote
History...is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake. — James Joyce · 1922John Maynard Keynes1 quote
A study of the history of opinion is a necessary preliminary to the emancipation of the mind. — John Maynard Keynes · 1926Karl Popper1 quote
There is no history of mankind, there is only an indefinite number of histories of all kinds of aspects of human life. And one of these is the history of political power. This is elevated into the history of the world. — Karl Popper · 1945Lucille Clifton1 quote
It would be nice to forget history, but we do it at our peril. — Lucille Clifton · 2007Milan Kundera1 quote
The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting. — Milan Kundera · 1979Napoleon Bonaparte1 quote
Think of it, soldiers; from the summit of these pyramids, forty centuries look down upon you. — Napoleon Bonaparte · 1823