Top 100 History Life Quotes
#1. For much of their history, life for most people in China was arduous and circumscribed - and people travelled as little as they could.
Evan Osnos
#2. To deal with history [life] means to abandon one's self to chaos but to retain a belief in the ordination and the meaning. It is a very serious task.
Hermann Hesse
#3. There are two lives to each of us, the life of our actions, and the life of our minds and hearts. History reveals men's deeds and their outward characters, but not themselves. There is a secret self that has its own life, unpenetrated and unguessed.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
#4. Of course, one way of thinking about all of life and civilization is as being about how the world registers and processes information. Certainly that's what sex is about; that's what history is about.
Seth Lloyd
#5. In a day and age when, unfortunately, so few write letters or keep a diary any longer, the Wright Papers stand as a striking reminder of a time when that was not the way and of the immense value such writings can have in bringing history to life.
David McCullough
#6. No method nor discipline can supersede the necessity of being forever on the alert. What is a course of history, or philosophy, or poetry, or the most admirable routine of life, compared with the discipline of looking always at what is to be seen? Will you be a reader, a student merely, or a seer?
Henry David Thoreau
#7. If given a chance, I would really want to explore the monuments in Delhi, like Qutub Minar and the forts. I have been there as a child, but now I want to go back and understand the history and significance behind them. We take all of these things for granted in life.
Shreya Ghoshal
#8. History has proven that it's impossible to crush the artist. There's always gonna be a need for somebody to write a poem or sing a song about something, about life - that makes it real. There's the word that goes beyond the word.
Mos Def
#9. History is as light as individual human life, unbearably light, light as a feather, as dust swirling into the air, as whatever will no longer exist tomorrow.
Milan Kundera
#10. I think history is only ever invisible when it abets your sense of self, your desires, your ambitions, when it carries your life along in a kind of frictionless way.
Garth Greenwell
#11. When I crawled down the rabbit hole into the pivotal event of my life--indeed the pivotal event of my generation--to write "Escape from Saigon - a Novel" I never expected it to be such an emotional journey into a life I left four decades ago.
Dick Pirozzolo
#12. Like an unfinished symphony, her story played on my mind for most of my life. It would rock to the tune of the passage of time, an adagio of high notes, low notes an illusive movements. Then when I least expected it, I happened upon the missing notes in the life of Charlotte Howe Taylor.
Sally Armstrong
#13. After his failed political career, Lincoln often pondered the question of the purpose of the meaning of life. In 1850 [ten years before he was elected President], Lincoln told Herdon [his law partner] How hard, oh how hard it is to die and leave one's country no better than if one had never lived.
Ronald C. White Jr.
#14. I have a unique history. There's no way to ever separate what your life would have been like if you had taken a different path. You have to embrace what is yours, and if you don't like it, you have to decide to change it.
Eve Plumb
#15. Violence is the most elemental truth of life. It's the central shaper of history, the ultimate determiner of whether A or B is going to get his way.
James Carlos Blake
#16. Since historical reconstruction is a rational process, only justified and indeed possible if it involves the human reason, what we call history is the mess we call life reduced to some order. pattern and possibly purpose.
Geoffrey Elton
#17. Life is conflict; peace is death. Forces of chaos keep the cycles of history moving.
Jack Donovan
#18. It is not that God is the spectator and sharer of our present life, howsoever important that is; but rather that we are the reverent listeners and participants in God's action in the sacred story, the history of the Christ on earth.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#19. I have come to realize that in life and politics, there is always more to take into consideration.
Michael Bronski
#20. I have learned, as I wrote, that history must be discovered, not declared. It's an admission that one grows in life.
Henry A. Kissinger
#21. 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
#22. In The Tricky Art of Co-Existing, Sandi Toksvig navigates life's little dilemmas with wit and not-so-common sense. You'll learn the strange history of common courtesy and the one true secret of social success: how to not drive everyone around you crazy.
William Poundstone
#23. The circumstances of everyday life were too demanding-and in American's great cities, appalling.
Charles E. Rosenberg
#24. Before the battle they had been discussing whether there might be life after death, and Windham and Rochester had made a pact that if there was, the first to die would come back and tell the other. But, said Rochester, he [Windham] never did.
Jenny Uglow
#25. The history of life is a story of massive removal followed by differentiation within a few surviving stocks, not the conventional tale of steadily increasing excellence, complexity, and diversity.
Stephen Jay Gould
#26. Throughout history, while day-to-day life has changed, humanity hasn't.
Rachel Harris
#27. There never has been a time in our history when work was so abundant or when wages were as high, whether measured by the currency in which they are paid or by their power to supply the necessaries and comforts of life.
Benjamin Harrison
#28. The 1860 election became a referendum on the southern way of life.
Bruce Catton
#29. What you see is that the most outstanding feature of life's history is a constant domination by bacteria.
Stephen Jay Gould
#30. The anarch knows the rules. He has studied them as a historian and goes along with them as a contemporary. Wherever possible, he plays his own game within their framework; this makes the fewest waves.
Ernst Junger
#31. Crude classifications and false generalizations are the curse of the organized life.
H.G.Wells
#32. Politics? Boring? Politics is history on the wing! What other sphere of human activity calls forth all that is most noble in men's souls, and all that is most base? Or has such excitement? Or more vividly exposes our strengths and weaknesses? Boring? You might as well say that life itself is boring!
Robert Harris
#33. While we are living in the present, we must celebrate life every day, knowing that we are becoming history with every work, every action, every deed.
Mattie J.T. Stepanek
#34. In all the history of the boxing game, you'll find no human interest story to compare with the life narrative of James J. Braddock.
Damon Runyon
#35. For long, history was mainly political history, and historical narrative was confined to an account of the most important crises in political life, or to an account of wars and great generals.
Michael Rostovtzeff
#36. My administration will be more supportive of the good works done here than any administration in the history of this country because I understand the power of faith, that faith can change lives.
George W. Bush
#37. Those of us who read carried around with us like martyrs a secret knowledge, a secret joy, and a secret hope: There is a life worth living where history is still taking place; there are ideas worth dying for, and circumstances where courage is still prized.
Annie Dillard
#38. For every book that I write ... I develop a history for each person and make sure they are well rounded and flawed. You have to know everything about them from their shoe size, to where they went to school, to what their first pet was, to what they like to eat, to what they want out of life.
Jojo Moyes
#40. As a freelance writer, I'd be asked to become an expert for various magazines on any subject, whether food or wine or history or the life span of veterinarians. I was completely unschooled in any of these things.
John Hodgman
#41. YESTERDAY IS HISTORY. TOMORROW IS A MYSTERY. TODAY IS A GIFT. THAT'S WHY IT'S CALLED THE PRESENT. WORK HARD, BE HAPPY, AND ENJOY YOUR LIFE IN WAYWARD PINES!
Blake Crouch
#42. Is the very mechanism for the universe to come into being meaningless or unworkable or both unless the universe is guaranteed to produce life, consciousness and observership somewhere and for some little time in its history-to-be?
John P. Wheeler III
#43. We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there "is" such a thing as being too late. This is no time for apathy or complacency. This is a time for vigorous and postive action.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#44. We don't know the spiritual advancements long-term veganism - over generations - would have for human life. It would be certainly a different civilisation, and the first one in the whole of our history that would truly deserve the title of being a civilisation.
Donald Watson
#45. There are periods in history when change is necessary, and other periods when it is better to keep everything for the time as it is. The art of life is to be in the rhythm of your age.
Oswald Mosley
#46. One must not love oneself so much, as to avoid getting involved in the risks of life that history demands of us, and those that fend off danger will lose their lives.
Oscar Romero
#47. 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
#48. A rich and mature life involves opening up to a wider world. If we base our understanding of life only on what we personally experience, we are impoverished indeed.
Robert Strayer
#49. If we are still here to witness the destruction of our planet some five billion years or more hence, then we will have achieved something so unprecedented in the history of life that we should be willing to sing our swansong with joy - Sic Transit Gloria Mundi.
Stephen Jay Gould
#50. If we measured success by longevity, then dinosaurs must rank as the number one success story in the history of land life.
Robert T. Bakker
#51. The contribution of Islam to history and modern civilization is the product of the efforts of peoples of many races and tongues which came to accept its way of life.
Aly Khan
#52. I was thinking that a life is just the history of what we give our attention to,' said Patrick. 'The rest is packaging.
Edward St. Aubyn
#53. What is normal? Normal is yesterday and last week and last month taken together
Terry Pratchett
#54. Primitive times are lyrical, ancient times epical, modern times dramatic. The ode sings of eternity, the epic imparts solemnity tohistory, the drama depicts life. The characteristic of the first poetry is ingeniousness, of the second, simplicity, of the third, truth.
Victor Hugo
#55. There are no simple congruities in life or history. The cult of happiness erroneously assumes them.
Reinhold Niebuhr
#56. Of course, history is only a muddle of facts and a fuddle of professors, and anyone who thinks it is one clear voice saying "Arise, sir Knight" deserves a life sentence in Camelot.
Wilfrid Sheed
#57. September 11 awoke us to the threat of terrorism. It was forever bookmarked in our history as the day when life as Americans knew it, changed forever.
Randy Forbes
#58. More good has been accomplished by simple people seeking their own honest ends than by all the philanthropists in history.
Robert Breault
#59. Richard Nixon had a kind of Walter Mitty fantasy life. He was a man with a grandiose thoughts: dreams of not simply being president but maybe becoming one of the truly great presidents of American history.
Robert Dallek
#60. Is it more important for you to know what happened in the First World War or to memorize other significant dates in history, or is it more important to learn the strategies they used for optimum leadership, success and joyful living?
Don't you think schools need to teach the latter?
Maddy Malhotra
#61. Every person my size has a different life, a different history. Different ways of dealing with it. Just because I'm seemingly O.K. with it, I can't preach how to be O.K. with it. I don't think I still am O.K. with it. There's days when I'm not.
Peter Dinklage
#62. Take Bach or Schubert: Their music was dedicated to God but filled and shaped their worldly lives. If you are a committed atheist, you lean back and miss all the richness of that history.
Martin Walser
#63. Auschwitz was a dark epiphany, providing us with a terrible vision of what life is like when all sense of the sacred is lost and the human being
whoever he or she may be
is no longer revered as an inviolable mystery.
Karen Armstrong
#64. It's possible to be satisfied with a day's work or a cake, but a life ... what is a life but a history of events badly remembered?
Kevin McCloud
#65. Woz is living his own life now. He hasn't been around Apple for about five years. But what he did will go down in history.
Steve Jobs
#66. I believe in nonviolence as a way of life, as a way of living.
John Lewis
#67. Behind every door in London there are stories, behind every one ghosts. The greatest writers in the history of the written word have given them substance, given them life.
And so we readers walk, and dream, and imagine, in the city where imagination found its great home.
Anna Quindlen
#68. You know history better than I do, you've been teaching all your life. Without real opposition you get dictators down the line. Idi, Amin, Mugabe. No democracy without opposition.
Nadine Gordimer
#69. What better preparation for a history which seeks to bring societies to life and to understand that life than to have really lived, commanded men, suffered with them and shared their joys.
Lucien Febvre
#70. Advances in medicine and agriculture have saved vastly more lives than have been lost in all the wars in history.
Carl Sagan
#71. Life doesn't just happen; it's constructed through the history of power. And that's something I am interested in and so is the art world: a world that's trying to engage socially, with a leftist slant, to work out how we got here.
Mike Mills
#72. When I try to outline the history of ethical life, it's sometimes possible to find evidence for a hypothesis about how important transitions actually went. Often, however, that isn't so. There are many facts about human life in the Paleolithic we're never likely to know.
Philip Kitcher
#73. We have been troubled about the world, and had almost lost faith in man; it helps to think about the long history of the earth, and of how life came to be. And when we think in terms of millions of years, we are not so impatient that our own problems be solved tomorrow.
Rachel Carson
#74. All life is related. And it enables us to construct with confidence the complex tree that represents the history of life
David Attenborough
#75. Then you are no longer afraid of death, Your Majesty?" the lady asked, awed at the queen's adventures. "No, I am no longer afraid of life.
Constance Jagodzinski
#76. I gave up the notion of writing the life of Joan of Arc, as I found that there was absolutely no new material to be gleaned on her history - in fact, she had been thrashed out.
Sabine Baring-Gould
#77. There is no need to rush in life. Just with one word at a time, your sweet life history will be written boldly in capitals and highlighted for easy access. Be sure you are passing the test of patience!
Israelmore Ayivor
#78. It seems to be overwhelmingly likely that there is life out there and eventually we will make contract. And when contact is made, it will be the end of Earth's cultural evolution. It will be the greatest discovery in the history of humankind.
Paul Horowitz
#79. [The] Japanese were a people in a profound, inverse, reverse, or if I preferred it, even perverse sense, more in love with death than living.
Sir Laurens Van Der Post
#80. Silence can be a plan
rigorously executed
the blueprint to a life
It is a presence
it has a history a form
Do not confuse it
with any kind of absence
Adrienne Rich
#81. Don't be so caught up in the noble cause of responsibility that you lose your passion for who you are living for.
Shannon L. Alder
#82. In the uncertain ebb and flow of time and emotions much of one's life history is etched in the senses.
Banana Yoshimoto
#83. The Book of Telling tells of a woman's journey to uncover the secret life of her father and to find herself in the process, an unusual counterpoint between personal history and the history of a young nation. Haunting, powerful, and beautifully written.
Alan Lightman
#84. I was always anti-marriage. I didn't understand monogamy. I couldn't figure out how that could last. And then I met Bryn and I started to understand the beauty of constancy and history and change and going on the roller coaster with someone - of having a partner in life.
Maria Bello
#85. A library, to modify the famous metaphor of Socrates, should be the delivery room for the birth of ideas - a place where history comes to life.
Norman Cousins
#86. I guess she was a life line
Sewing our family fabric together
From me to dad to her
Gave me a sense of continuity
Especially when my daughter was born
As she was slipping away
Richard L. Ratliff
#87. Cut off's are like real sadist as they watch some folks happy and disappoint the majority. People dream of a life at Delhi University. Delhiites know there is something special about the brand name and life at the campus. Rest as they say is history and it speaks volumes.
Parul Wadhwa
#88. All my life, I never believed most things I read in history books and a lot of things I learned in school. But now I've found I don't have the right to make a judgment on someone based on something I've read. I don't have the right to judge anything. That's the lesson I've learned
Kurt Cobain
#89. The story in that particular spot was an ancient history story, and we wanted to give it a historical feeling, which was why we used a historical calligraphy scroll come to life.
Jennifer Yuh Nelson
#90. We've not been assigned to hang out until He returns we've been given a message and a power that completely revolutionizes life. Why would anyone want to get up in the morning and not shape the course of world history?
Bill Johnson
#91. A man who risks his life in shooting big game in order to secure good specimens for natural history collections, or to rid a district of a man-eater or other dangerous neighbor, is a sportsman in the true sense.
Robert Baden-Powell
#92. All cultures through all time have constantly been engaged in a dance with new possibilities for life. Change is the one constant in human history.
Wade Davis
#93. We have to save the history we have. You never know what small bit of it might change your life
or change the whole world.
Jack Gantos
#94. I had always looked down on sociology as this arriviste discipline. It didn't have the noble history of English and history as a subject. But once I had a little exposure to it, I said, 'Hey, here's the key. Here's the key to understanding life and all its forms.'
Tom Wolfe
#95. Denied access to information about important arenas of human life, history, and art, women like Augusta Welland demonstrate well into adulthood a lack of moral insight and sympathetic compassion.
Edith Wharton
#96. Our ability to look back on the past, our need or desire to make sense of it, is both a blessing and a curse; and our inability to see into the future with any degree of accuracy is, simultaneously, the thing that saves us and the thing that condemns us.
James Robertson
#97. Without Pentecost the Christ-event - the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus - remains imprisoned in history as something to remember, think about and reflect on. The Spirit of Jesus comes to dwell within us, so that we can become living Christs here and now.
Henri Nouwen
#98. Powers rise and fall. Leaders come and go. History makes a mockery of our best-laid plans, in the end, you aare left with thosecthings you have shared with one another
Kirsten Beyer
#99. A man who tosses worms in the river isn't 't necessarily a friend of the fish. All the fish who take him for a friend, who think the worm's got no hook in it, usually end up in the frying pan.
Malcolm X
#100. If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
