Top 100 History Is The Past Quotes
#1. History is the past that is definitely, hopefully not coming back.
Boris Zubry
#2. Is not the pastness of the past the more profound, the more legendary, the more immediately it falls before the present ?
Thomas Mann
#3. History is the depository of great actions, the witness of what is past, the example and instructor of the present, and monitor to the future.
Miguel De Cervantes
#4. In the past, only some of the males, but all of the females, were able to procreate. Equality is more natural for females.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
#5. What is history? An echo of the past in the future; a reflex from the future on the past.
Victor Hugo
#6. History is not just a tale of men's making, but is a thing tied to the land. We call a hill by the name of a hero who died there, or name a river after a princess who fled beside its banks, and when the old names vanish, the stories go with them and the new names carry no reminder of the past.
Bernard Cornwell
#7. The man for whom history is bunk is almost invariably as obtuse to the future as he is blind to the past.
J. Frank Dobie
#8. history is our attempt to reconstruct the past from the evidence that remains
Philip Parker
#9. Another factor that seems to me to be equally important is the great myth and rationale of 'the modern,' that it places dynamite at the foot of old error and levels its shrines and monuments. Contempt for the past surely accounts for a consistent failure to consult it.
Marilynne Robinson
#10. History is a slippery business; the past is not a constant but a landscape that mutates according to argument and opinion.
Penelope Lively
#11. In history, a great volume is unrolled for our instruction, drawing the materials of future wisdom from the past errors and infirmities of mankind.
Edmund Burke
#12. I have issues with anyone who tries to claim that science is unworkable - creationists who deny evidence for past history, yet are happy to benefit from the products of the methodology that they otherwise deny.
Liz Williams
#13. Deep is the well of the past. Should we not call it bottomless?
Thomas Mann
#14. There is much to learn about what could happen in the gardens of the future, should designers wish to learn about the past.
Tom Turner
#15. Railing against the past will not heal us. History has happened. It's over and done with. All we can do is to change its course by encouraging what we love instead of destroying what we don't.
Arundhati Roy
#16. The great revolution in the history of man, past, present and future, is the revolution of those determined to be free.
John F. Kennedy
#17. History is about the untold story, and writing historical fiction is a wonderful way to present the past in a compelling and entertaining way.
Paul W. Feenstra
#18. [Pleasure is what suggested] which behaviors, emotions, social patterns and patterns of taste served us well during our evolutionary history. They were experienced as pleasures and encoded into our formative genetic codes ... deep in the past, from about 100,000 years ago and beyond.
Lionel Tiger
#19. We're doomed to repeat the past no matter what. That's what it is to be alive. It's pretty dense kids who haven't figured that out by the time they're ten ... Most kids can't afford to go to Harvard and be misinformed.
Kurt Vonnegut
#20. History is really a study of the future, not the past.
Arundhati Roy
#21. It seems to me ... that I have always lived! I possess memories that go back to the Pharoahs. I see myself very clearly at different ages of history, practicing different professions ... My present personality is the result of my lost [past] personalities.
Gustave Flaubert
#22. Symbolic rearrangement of the past is of course an unavoidable aspect of all human attempts to make sense of the present.
Eamon Duffy
#23. The question I am most often asked is how do I find my ideas? The answer is I don't. Ideas find me. A character in history will suddenly step right out of the past and demand a book. Generally, people don't bother to speak to me unless there's a good chance that I'll take them on.
Jean Fritz
#24. We must come to understand our past, our history, in terms of the soil and water and forests and grasses that have made it what it is.
William Vogt
#25. After voluntary exertions on the part of our people to which the history of the world furnishes no parallel, is the old root of bitterness still to remain in the ground, to sprout and bear fruit in the future as it has borne fruit in the past?
Robert Dale Owen
#26. We are condemned to repeat the past whether we remember it or not. It is inevitable; just ask Nietzsche (eternal return) or Hegel (history repeats itself) or James McCourt (history repeats itself like hiccups). Beirutis
Rabih Alameddine
#27. History is above all else an argument. It is an argument between different historians; and, perhaps, an argument between the past and the present, an argument between what actually happened, and what is going to happen next. Arguments are important; they create the possibility of changing things.
John H. Arnold
#28. History dies without the present. There is no future without the path made to it by the past.
Aidan Chambers
#29. The present is an age of talkers, and not doers; and the reason is, that the world is growing old. We are so far advanced in the Arts and Sciences, that we live in retrospect, and doat on past achievements.
William Hazlitt
#30. If we seek solace in the prisons of the distant past
Security in human systems we're told will always always last
Emotions are the sail and blind faith is the mast
Without the breath of real freedom we're getting nowhere fast.
(History Will Teach Us Nothing)
Sting
#31. History is a relentless master. It has no present, only the past rushing into the future. To try to hold fast is to be swept aside.
John F. Kennedy
#32. The difference in the past and history is that the past is set in stone history is just an account from the guy with the strongest axe
Andy Andrews
#33. You gotta live in the moment. I don't care what you've done in your life, it has nothing to do with what you're gonna do or what you can do. The past is history, tomorrow is a mystery. But today is a gift-that's why they call it the present.
Mike Ditka
#34. History is the long shadow cast by the past upon the future. Shadows, by nature, lack details.
Ken Liu
#35. We have to forget the past. History is something that even today we are paying the consequences, and the future is integration. We all as a people, as citizens, as the leadership of both countries should be looking in that direction.
Atifete Jahjaga
#36. It is always perilous to suppose that the past is over and done with or that it can ever safely be disconnected from the pressing concerns of the present.
Christopher Kelly
#37. The past is really almost as much a work of the imagination as the future.
Jessamyn West
#38. But the history of independent India has remained a field mostly untilled. If history is 'formally constituted knowledge of the past', then for the period since 1947 this knowledge practically does not exist.
Ramachandra Guha
#39. I like reading about the past. I'm definitely not a history buff, but I do read a bit of history now and again, and to do that for work is really exciting.
James McAvoy
#40. History is a way of interpreting, rather than, say, knowing, the past. It is usually a set of disputes between those who have access to the same sources. It depends on ideology as much as voting in an election does.
Colm Toibin
#41. Our self discoveries make us each a microcosm of the larger pattern of history. The inertia of introspection leads toward recollection, for only through memory is the past recaptured and understood. In the fact of experiencing and making the present, we are all actors.
Terence McKenna
#42. We are always remaking history. Our memory is always an interpretive reconstruction of the past, so is perspective.
Umberto Eco
#43. A strange thing is memory, and hope; one looks backward, and the other forward; one is of today, the other of tomorrow. Memory is history recorded in our brain, memory is a painter, it paints pictures of the past and of the day.
Grandma Moses
#44. Who owns history? Everyone and no one
which is why the study of the past is a constantly evolving, never-ending journey of discovery.
Eric Foner
#46. It is in the very nature of things human that every act that has once made its appearance and has been recorded in the history of mankind stays with mankind as a potentiality long after its actuality has become a thing of the past.
Hannah Arendt
#47. Don't deny the past. Remember everything. If you're bitter, be bitter. Cry it out! Scream! Denial is gangrene.
Joy Kogawa
#48. Once again a new world view is arising ... This idea is the culmination of all human history. It holds the promise of fulfilling the great aspirations of the past and heralds the advent of the next phase of our evolution. It is the idea of conscious evolution.
Barbara Marx Hubbard
#49. Whether you attribute it to some mysterious triple package or to your own Horatio Alger story, to succeed in America is, somehow, to be complicit with the idea of America - which means that at some level you've made peace with its rather ugly past.
Vijay Iyer
#50. It is not a first time in history that we have got people who have sold out and subverted the ideas for which they stood for in the past.
Auliq Ice
#51. They were of the past, and the past always mends itself, no matter how we interfere." "Which is why you can't go back and kill baby Hitler to stop the war from happening," said Enoch. "History heals itself. Isn't that interesting?
Ransom Riggs
#52. Our children may learn about the heroes of the past. Our task is to make ourselves the architects of the future.
Jomo Kenyatta
#53. Why would I talk about the past when I got a bright future? What kind of money is the past gonna make me? Everyone wants to know information. Now, if you wanna know information, if you want history, you're gonna read a history book. The past ain't gonna make you no cash.
Riff Raff
#54. The thoughtful believer recalls God's faithfulness in the past when confronted by any new threat. Part of spiritual maturity is strong sense of one's own history.
Max Anders
#55. The Chinese government wants me to say that for many centuries Tibet has been part of China. Even if I make that statement, many people would just laugh. And my statement will not change past history. History is history.
Dalai Lama
#56. History repeats itself is another way of saying the past harmonizes.
Stephen King
#57. What if I can't turn my head? I can look in any direction by turning my wheelchair, and I choose to look back. Rodman to the contrary notwithstanding, that is the only direction we can learn from.
Wallace Stegner
#58. Its a real honor to be included among the list of finalists, when you see the names that are there, ... Some of the guys who won the Hank Aaron Award in the past are thought of as some of the best players in the history of the game, so just to be included with those guys is really gratifying.
Mark Teixeira
#59. The claim "oh, that's ancient history" is almost always a wish, am anxious attempt to put a boundary of time around some event that really is not over at all; it is a bid to silence the past.
Robert A. Orsi
#60. The future is simply nothing at all. Nothing has happened to the present by becoming past except that fresh slices of existence have been added to the total history of the world. The past is thus as real as the present.
C. D. Broad
#61. The only thing that interests me is history - reviewing the past and making something out of it.
Leon Redbone
#63. History is not the accumulation of events of every kind which happened in the past. It is the science of human societies.
Numa Denis Fustel De Coulanges
#64. History is a light that illuminates the past,
and a key that unlocks the door to the future.
Runoko Rashidi
#65. More history than ever is today being revised or invented by people who do not want the real past, but only a past that suits their purpose. Today is the great age of historical mythology. The defence of history by its professionals is today more urgent in politics than ever. We are needed.
Eric Hobsbawm
#66. George Orwell said, "Whoever controls the past controls the future," by which he meant that history is incredibly important in shaping the world view of the next generation of people.
Howard Zinn
#67. History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon.
Napoleon Bonaparte
#68. It is indeed the duty of historians to stress the contrast between
the standards of the past and the standards of the present. Some
fulfil that duty on purpose, others by accident.
Norman Davies
#70. If we do not try harder to remember the history of the other half of the European continent, the history of the other twentieth-century totalitarian regime, in the end it is we in the West who will not understand our past, we who will not know how our world came to be the way it is. And
Anne Applebaum
#71. The eternal struggle in the law between constancy and change is largely a struggle between history and reason, between past reason and present needs.
Felix Frankfurter
#72. The past is recorded almost exclusively in the voices of elites and males, in the viewpoints of the wealthy and the powerful, in the visions of the literate and the educated.
John Dominic Crossan
#73. TODAY is the PAST of your FUTURE. So, make TODAY count for the sake of your HISTORY. Use your words, time & choices wisely
Fela Durotoye
#74. When there's a history between people, it makes for some serious complications - even in something seemingly as simple as friendship. There is no real starting over. There's only trying to minimize the importance of things in the past. And some events are just too life altering to trivialize.
Megan Thomason
#75. When a man is interested in the past he writes history; when he is interested in the future he makes it.
Will Durant
#76. Leave No Trace (bad language)
Sometimes she will speak of him as present, sometimes as past, and sometimes as always. That is how it should be. No one needs rescuing from her own story of the truth and no one needs to side step her history. p270
Hannah Nyala
#77. Ah, but is any history really all that ancient?' Second asked. 'Doesn't every moment from the past affect the present?'
This man was more annoying than any history teacher Jordan had ever had.
Margaret Peterson Haddix
#78. History is not the past. It is the stories we tell about the past. How we tell these stories - triumphantly or self-critically, metaphysically or dialectally - has a lot to do with whether we cut short or advance our evolution as human beings.
Grace Lee Boggs
#79. Kids born today will see us navigate past the first greatest test of humanity, which is: can we actually be smart enough to live on a planet without destroying it?
Alex Steffen
#80. The task of the historian is to understand the peoples of the past better than they understand themselves.
Herbert Butterfield
#81. The point of history, the very essence of it as a field of study, is to find correspondences. You look at the past so that you can understand it, and through it you come to a better understanding of your own time. If you're lucky, sometimes you can even extrapolate to possible futures." "I'm not
M.R. Carey
#82. To make of human affairs a coherent, precise, predictable whole one must ignore or suppress man as he really is. It is by eliminating man from their equation that the makers of history can predict the future, and the writers of history can give a pattern to the past.
Eric Hoffer
#83. The idea that in prehistoric times a man would spend his life hunting only for the benefit of his own wife and children, who were dependent solely upon his hunting prowess for survival, is simply a projection of 1950s marital norms onto the past.
Stephanie Coontz
#84. Each soil has had its own history. Like a river, a mountain, a forest, or any natural thing, its present condition is due to the influences of many things and events of the past.
Charles Kellogg
#85. As is always the case, events do not conform easily to the generalizations historians produce to try to make sense of the past.
Glenn Porter
#86. The past actually happened. History is what someone took the time to write down.
A. Whitney Brown
#87. History is not what happened in the past, but the best story we can tell with the available material
Joshua Wolf Shenk
#88. History is never the simple recounting of the past as it really was. It is inevitably an interpretation of the past, a retrospective vision of the past, which is limited both by the sources themselves and by the historian who selects and interprets them.
Timothy George
#89. You must always know the past, for there is no real Was, there is only Is.
William Faulkner
#90. Those who don't remember the past are condemned to repeat the eleventh grade.
James W. Loewen
#91. Oh life to live, life already lived,
time that comes back in a swell of sea,
time that recedes without turning its head,
the past is not past, it is still passing by,
flowing silently into the next vanishing moment
Octavio Paz
#92. I love the Warner Brothers lot. There is so much history there. They've done such a smart thing. They have signs outside of each stage which tell you what movies and TV shows were shot inside. So cool ... you can almost feel the ghosts of actors past.
Valerie Azlynn
#93. If the history of the past fifty years teaches us anything, it is that peace does not follow disarmament - disarmament follows peace.
Bernard Baruch
#94. When the past is mentioned, some cry! When the past is mentioned, some ponder! When the past is mentioned, never again comes into the mind of some people. When the past is mentioned, some recall their had I known! The past is past, but its footprints never go!
Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
#95. The best thing we can do with the failures of the past is to let them be history.
Gary Chapman
#96. All history is really nothing more than the application of ideology to the past.
Tom Clancy
#97. It is up to us, to everyone at Celtic Park, to build up our own legends. We don't want to live with history, to be compared with legends from the past. We must make new legends.
Jock Stein
#98. The art of nations is to be accumulative, just as science and history are; the work of living men not superseding, but building itself upon the work of the past.
John Ruskin
#99. The past is our treasure. Its works, whether we know them or not, flourish in our lives with whatever strength they had. From it we draw provision for our journey, the collected wisdom whose harvests are all ours to reap and carry with us, though we may never live again in the fields that grew them.
Freya Stark
#100. History is meaningless unless you discern how the past shapes the present.
Rory Clements
