Top 100 History Present Quotes
#1. He can neither read nor write and in him broods already a taste for mindless violence. All history present in that visage, the child the father of the man.
Cormac McCarthy
#2. Every law, every constitution, every regulative decision is based upon what people are discussing in their community. It's based upon our sum knowledge of history and the present.
Julian Assange
#3. Historical novels, in particular, allow us to relive the past without the neatness of history, and with all the complexity of the present.
Laila Lalami
#4. In the present age when communication is so rapid, we should create a different tradition, traditions are created everyday. Five years now is like 100 years before. We are living in a society that has no history. There's no precedent for this kind of society so we can break the old patterns.
Yoko Ono
#5. Whatever is goode in its kinde ought to be preserv'd in respect for antiquity, as well as our present advantage, for destruction can be profitable to none but such as live by it.
Nicholas Hawksmoor
#6. Without archives many stories of real people would be lost, and along with those stories, vital clues that allow us to reflect and interpret our lives today.
Sara Sheridan
#7. History is, in its essence, exciting; to present it as dull is, to my mind, stark and unforgivable misrepresentation.
Catherine Drinker Bowen
#8. The history of the past interests us only in so far as it illuminates the history of the present.
Ernest Dimnet
#9. Lilianna: Ask me again later.
Tate: Okay Lil'Miss. Magic 8 Ball.
Lilianna: Really, ask me again in a few weeks. I'll have a better read on the relationship in the present tense then.
Tate: You'll have a better read on the present in the future. Yeah, I think that's called History class.
H.R. Willaston
#10. Anyone who wishes to destroy humanity's past, desires to destroy its future.
Mario J. Lucero
#11. For all but our most recent history, death was a common, ever-present possibility. It didn't matter whether you were five or fifty. Every day was a roll of the dice.
Atul Gawande
#12. History, in illuminating the past, illuminates the present, and in illuminating the present, illuminates the future.
Benjamin Cardozo
#13. Waking, after all, was an almost natal state. You surfaced without history, then spent the blinks and yawns reassembling your past, shuffling the shards into chronological order before fortifying yourself for the present.
Dennis Lehane
#14. History isn't really about the past - settling old scores. It's about defining the present and who we are.
Ken Burns
#15. That is the danger we now face. And this is why the intermixing of science and politics is a bad combination, with a bad history. We must remember the history, and be certain that what we present to the world as knowledge is disinterested and honest.
Michael Crichton
#16. History has to be rewritten in every generation, because although the past does not change, the present does; each generation asks new questions of the past and finds new areas of sympathy as it re-lives different aspects of the experiences of its predecessors.
Christopher Hill
#17. The history of the development of mechanics is quite indispensable to a full comprehension of the science in its present condition. It also affords a simple and instructive example or the processes by which natural science generally is developed.
Ernst Mach
#18. We carry with us the weight of the past, and because we do not have a finely developed sense of history and historicism, it is a past that is still alive in our present. We wear the dust of history on our foreheads, and the mud of the future on our feet.
Shashi Tharoor
#19. The great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, are unconsciously controlled by it in many ways, and history is literally present in all that we do.
James Baldwin
#20. The past is history. The future is a mystery. The present is a gift.
Lisa Unger
#21. Poetry was syllable and rhythm. Poetry was the measurement of breath. Poetry was time make audible. Poetry evoked the present moment; poetry was the antidote to history. Poetry was language free from habit.
Damon Galgut
#22. To THOSE who want to lift this nation from the dungheap of history, the past does not matter - only the present, the awareness of the deadening rot which surrounds and suffocates us, and what we must do to vanquish it.
F. Sionil Jose
#23. Mddle Eastern history is filled with minefields, not because of what actually happened in the past, but because of how people read back the present into the past.
Christopher Catherwood
#24. The Self doesn't live forever in time, it lives in the timeless present prior to time, prior to history, change, succession. The Self is present as Pure Presence, not as everlasting duration, a rather horrible notion.
Ken Wilber
#25. Today is a gift of God, which is why we call it the present.
Bil Keane
#26. The reward of history is that it releases and relieves us from present strife.
Lord Acton
#27. . . . Nietzche himself had a Christian view of history, seeing the present moment always as some crisis, some fall from classical greatness, some corruption or evil to be saved from.
Saul Bellow
#28. Yesterday is the history chapter in the book of life, isn't it time you turned the page?
Rob Liano
#29. As a novelist it is my job to tell stories that inspire and entertain but I am increasingly mindful that many of these historical tales (which of themselves are fascinating) relate directly to our issues in society today.
Sara Sheridan
#30. If anybody tries to penetrate the past with the knife of the present will always act in vain. The past is invulnerable. Such attempts can only cause the present or the future to bleed." - Gregor Brand
Simon Schwartz
#31. You have reckoned that history ought to judge the past and to instruct the contemporary world as to the future. The present attempt does not yield to that high office. It will merely tell how it really was.
Leopold Von Ranke
#32. Equally, we require a collective past - hence the endless reinterpretations of history, frequently to suit the perceptions of the present.
Penelope Lively
#33. We view the past, and achieve our understanding of the past, only through the eyes of the present
E.H. Carr
#34. I have come to use the pan-Celtic history, which spans from 500 BC to the present, as a creative springboard. The music I am creating is a result of traveling down that road and picking up all manner of themes and influences, which may or may not be overtly Celtic in nature.
Loreena McKennitt
#35. I began to see, in the place of emptiness, presence. I began to see not only the visible landscape but the invisible one, a landscape in which history, unrecorded and unremembered as it is, had transmuted itself into an always present spiritual dimension.
Sharon Butala
#36. An important part of deciding where we want to go, as a society and culture, is knowing where we have come from, and indeed, how far we have come.
Sara Sheridan
#37. Truth: We are the present. We are now. We are the razor's edge of history. The future flies at us and from that dark blur we shape the past. And the past is forever.
N.D. Wilson
#38. None of us sees history fully; none of us is adequately aware of how the arrangements of the present moment foreclose the possibilities of others to fully live their only lives.
Garth Greenwell
#39. In fact, the history of North America has been perhaps more profoundly influenced by man's inheritance from his past homes than by the physical features of his present home.
Ellsworth Huntington
#40. We ought not to endeavor to revise history according to our latter day notions of what things ought to have been, or upon the theory that the past is simply a reflection of the present
Russell Kirk
#41. The present is not so glorious but that I should wish to dwell a little in the past.
Emmuska Orczy
#42. There is nothing quite like a dose of unvarnished history for inoculating people against the tendency to indict the present for failing to measure up to a sentimental notion of the past.
George F. Will
#43. If history really forever repeats itself: then, it has always been then.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
#44. I'm interested in the way in which the past affects the present and I think that if we understand a good deal more about history, we automatically understand a great more about contemporary life.
Toni Morrison
#45. In times of change and danger, when there is a quicksand of fear under one's reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present. John Dos Passos
George F. Will
#46. To grow, you must be willing to let your present and future be totally unlike your past. Your history is not your destiny.
Alan Cohen
#47. Understanding the times means understanding the course of history and civilization, as well as understanding the present situation. If we understand how God guides the development of human history, we can begin to understand the therapies needed to correct the problems of our times.
James B. Jordan
#48. My fascination with history is as much about the present as it is about the past.
Sara Sheridan
#49. You have told me your history, but speak little fo teh present. Why's that - Sabine Strohem
Nick Bantock
#50. One of the most singular facts about the unwritten history of this country is the consummate ability with which Southern influence, Southern ideas and Southern ideals, have from the very beginning even up to the present day, dictated to and domineered over the brain and sinew of this nation.
Anna Julia Cooper
#51. We can chart our future clearly and wisely only when we know the path which has led to the present.
Adlai E. Stevenson II
#52. The zionist argument to justify Israel's present occupation of Arab Palestine has no intelligent or legal basis in history.
Malcolm X
#53. We live in a moment of history where change is so speeded up that we begin to see the present only when it is already disappearing.
R.D. Laing
#54. What do you care?" Arik Siq asked. "Who your people were matters hardly at all. Who they are now is what matters. Who you are." "Your history is sometimes a way of understanding your present," Pan replied. "You are your history.
Terry Brooks
#55. The "self-actualization" philosophy from which most of this new bureaucratic language emerged insists that we live in a timeless present, that history means nothing, that we simply create the world around us through the power of the will.
David Graeber
#56. The past has a way of walking around in the present, behaving as if it were alive.
Anatol Lieven
#57. History ... a release from the troublesome promiscuous present.
Tod Wodicka
#58. There exists in human nature a strong propensity to depreciate the advantages, and to magnify the evils, of the present times.
Edward Gibbon
#59. In order to witness clearly the march of humanity from its inception to the present moment, an understanding of how humankind has held encounter with the divine as central is crucial. Ancient humanity provides us with an excellent laboratory for gaining such an understanding.
Roger D. Woodard
#60. I do think that the sense of being opposed to the present moment, that sense of the rub of history, invigorates the writing I find most exciting, and maybe precisely in being equally allegiant to an inward fineness of sensibility and an outward-facing rigor of protest or critique.
Garth Greenwell
#61. False Narrative: The Kingdom of God is Future No serious biblical scholar would deny that Jesus' proclaimed the kingdom of God. However, many scholars conclude that Jesus was not talking about our present world but rather an epoch in history that has not yet begun.
James Bryan Smith
#62. All our knowledge - past, present, and future - is nothing compared to what we will never know.
Konstantin Tsiolkovsky
#63. 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
#64. I've always been interested in foreign relations. It's my belief that study of history should be our preparation for understanding the present rather than an escape from it.
Elizabeth Kostova
#65. How it came to pass that man, originally taught, as we doubt not he was, to know and to worship the true Jehovah, is found, at so early a period of his history, a worshiper of baser objects, it is foreign to our present purpose to inquire.
Simon Greenleaf
#66. The artist is always engaged in writing a detailed history of the future because he is the only person aware of the nature of the present.
Marshall McLuhan
#67. First, I look at history the way I look at evolution. Some things die out for a good reason, and should be left dead. I put dictatorships and velociraptors in the same category: leave them in the past, where they can serve as frightening object lessons for the present.
Holly Lisle
#68. That's what I want for my life. I want to go to Peshawar ... Because there's more past than present there. Two and a half thousand years of history beneath its soil. How long a list of reasons do you need?
Kamila Shamsie
#69. History dies without the present. There is no future without the path made to it by the past.
Aidan Chambers
#70. Each age selects its own geniuses from the past to suit its own needs. It's always been that way.
Seb Kirby
#71. For the Arab, the past does not merely live. The past defines the present.
Davis Bunn
#72. Furthermore, the study of the present surroundings is insufficient: the history of the people, the influence of the regions through which it has passed on its migrations, and the people with whom it came into contact, must be considered.
Franz Boas
#73. [M]ore wars have been waged, more people killed, and more evil perpetrated in the name of religion than by any other institutional force in human history. The sad truth continues in our present day.
Charles Kimball
#74. 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
#75. My happiness is being able to present my talents for people to see, and I feel like I'm an ambassador of Thai history and Thai culture on film so that people can see Muay Thai.
Tony Jaa
#76. The great revolution in the history of man, past, present and future, is the revolution of those determined to be free.
John F. Kennedy
#78. With the historian it is an article of faith that knowledge of the past is a key to understanding the present.
Kenneth M. Stampp
#79. Alexander von Humboldt's wide-ranging Views of Nature is a masterpiece of nineteenth-century natural history, at once science and art. Mark W. Person's stunning new translation makes the wonders of this classic accessible to the English-language world of the present.
Daniel Walker Howe
#80. There is no creature so perfect in wisdom and knowledge but may learn something for time present, and to come, by times past.
John Robinson
#81. We are never completely contemporaneous with our present. History advances in disguise; it appears on stage wearing a mask of the preceding scene, and we tend to lose the meaning of the play.
Regis Debray
#82. The purpose of history is to explain the present - to say why the world around us is the way it is. History tells us what is important in our world, and how it came to be. It tells us what is to be ignored, or discarded. That is true power - profound power. The power to define a whole society.
Michael Crichton
#83. But the human character, however it may be exalted or depressed by a temporary enthusiasm, will return by degrees to its proper and natural level, and will resume those passions that seem the most adapted to its present condition.
Edward Gibbon
#84. The history of fiat money is little more than a register of monetary follies and inflations. Our present age merely affords another entry in this dismal register.
Hans F. Sennholz
#85. If the present is any guide, government-sanctioned, counterfeit history is in your future.
Nick Turse
#86. I knew that a historian (or a journalist, or anyone telling a story) was forced to choose, out of an infinite number of facts, what to present, what to omit. And that decision inevitably would reflect, whether consciously or not, the interests of the historian.
Howard Zinn
#87. I don't plan ahead; each book finds me. History itself, the resonance of the past with the present, is the common denominator in all of them.
Guy Gavriel Kay
#88. The great eventful Present hides the Past; but through the din Of its loud life hints and echoes from the life behind steal in.
John Greenleaf Whittier
#89. P.S. I offer a topic for discussion. The past is nothing more than the present romanticized, while the future is history with imagination. Any thoughts?
Scott Wilbanks
#90. Politics is history in the present tense.
John Avlon
#91. The forming of the five senses is a labour of the entire history of the world down to the present
Karl Marx
#92. Paul had an almost missionary companion. His name was Demas. Paul wrote his entire history in nine words. He says: Demas has forsaken me, having loved this present world.
Sterling W. Sill
#93. The common people have no history: persecuted by the present, they cannot think of preserving the memory of the past.
Jean-Henri Fabre
#94. Two men with a camera, thoughtfully observing the visual cacophony of one major thoroughfare and the complicated interplay of its history, its present, and the certainty of change, have laid the groundwork for a dialogue and a vision that reaches farther than human eyes can see.
Vicki Goldberg
#96. History always constitutes the relation between a present and its past. Consequently fear of the present leads to mystification of the past
John Berger
#97. Guns aren't just history's props and agents: they're history itself, spinning alternate futures in their chamber, hurling the present from their barrel, casting aside the empty shells of past
Tom McCarthy
#98. She saw and marked the revolutions that had been, and the present seemed to her only a point of rest, from which time was to renew his flight.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
#99. I'm a bad man. I need to understand the past. It illuminates the present.
Glen Cook
#100. You can learn as much about the history from reading about the present as you can vice versa, that is learning about the present through history, which is what I do for a living.
Ken Burns
