Top 100 Quotes About Good History
#1. A good history covers not only what was done, but the thought that went into the action. You can read the history of a country through its actions.
Benjamin Hooks
#2. If good history is dispassionate history, it must naturally wait until the passions of the period subside.
James Buchan
#4. Good writing is almost the concomitant of good history. Literature and history were joined long since by the powers which shaped the human brain; we cannot put them asunder.
C.V. Wedgwood
#5. Just as all politics is local, all good history is personal.
Marcia Clark
#6. Wilder watched Armstrong head back to video village under the lights of the set, attacking another apple as she went, and thought, Apples and women. Not a good history there.
Jennifer Crusie
#7. Indeed the general natural Tendency of Reading good History, must be, to fix in the Minds of Youth deep Impressions of the Beauty and Usefulness of Virtue of all Kinds, Publick Spirit, Fortitude.
Benjamin Franklin
#8. My argument is that War makes rattling good history; but Peace is poor reading.
Thomas Hardy
#9. We pride ourselves on making a good history of our lives, a good story to be told. And
Terry Pratchett
#10. Good history is a question of survival. Without any past, we will deprive ourselves of the defining impression of our being.
Ken Burns
#11. If people really want to know and learn from history, why do they want bad history? Why don't they want good history? Wouldn't you rather know the truth, rather than the legend?
Alison Weir
#13. History is life; he who has not lived, or has lived only enough to write a doctoral dissertation, is too inexperienced with life to write good history.
Louis Moreau Gottschalk
#14. Any good history begins in strangeness. The past should not be comfortable. The past should not a familar echo of the present, for if it is familar why revist it? The past should be so strange that you wonder how you and people you know and love could come from such a time.
Richard White
#15. Any good history book is mainly just a long list of mistakes, complete with names and dates. It's very embarrassing.
A. Whitney Brown
#16. The antidote to feel-good history is not feel-bad history but honest and inclusive history.
James W. Loewen
#17. Those who can win a war well can rarely make a good peace and those who could make a good peace would never have won the war.
Winston Churchill
#18. True there has been more talk of peace since 1945 than, I should think, at any other time in history. At least we hear more and read more about it because man's words, for good or ill, can now so easily reach the millions.
Lester B. Pearson
#19. At the dawn of history India started on her unending quest, and trackless centuries are filled with her striving and the grandeur of her success and her failures. Through good and ill fortune alike she has never lost sight of that quest or forgotten the ideals which gave her strength.
Jawaharlal Nehru
#20. It is the glory of London that it is always ending and beginning anew, and that a visitor, with a good eye and indefatigable feet, will find in her travels all the Londons she has ever met in the pages of books, one atop the other, like the strata of the Earth.
Anna Quindlen
#21. I often said that never in the history of the world did one man receive so much faith and trust as Hitler. Similary, no one has ever betrayed so many people and abused so much good faith as he did.
Hans Fritzsche
#22. I took on a year of reading books for a reason. Because words are witness to life: they record what has happened, and they make it all real. Words create the stories that become history and become unforgettable. Even fiction portrays truth: good fiction is truth.
Nina Sankovitch
#23. There are very good evolutionary reasons for having religion. From early human history we have evolved a need to see God. We have a perception of ourselves and in order for that to be a true perception we have to believe in a soul within us.
Jonathan Trigell
#25. The history of the last century shows, as we shall see later, that the advice given to governments by bankers, like the advice they gave to industrialists, was consistently good for bankers, but was often disastrous for governments, businessmen, and the people generally.
Carroll Quigley
#26. An ordinary Turk, an ordinary Arab, an ordinary Tunisian can change history. We believe that democracy is good, and that our people deserve it.
Ahmet Davutoglu
#27. I wanted to be what my high-school civics and history teacher thought of as a good American. That automatically involved taking an interest in government.
Olivia De Havilland
#28. All good criticism should be judged the way art is. You shouldn't read it the way you read history or science.
Leslie Fiedler
#29. The true history of Vietnamese civilian suffering does not fit comfortably into America's preferred postwar narrative - the tale of a conflict nobly fought by responsible commanders and good American boys, who should not be tainted by the occasional mistakes of a few 'bad apples' in their midst.
Nick Turse
#30. Mention the name George W. Bush in mixed company, and you're likely to spark a lot of debate and emotion - hot and cold, good and bad. Not a lot of neutral reaction. He was elected in the most controversial contest in American electoral history and governed during one of the most tumultuous decades.
Mark McKinnon
#31. Every writer has his writing technique - what he can and can't do to describe something like war or history. I'm not good at writing about those things, but I try because I feel it is necessary to write that kind of thing.
Haruki Murakami
#32. At no moment in history has a bright young girl with plenty of food and a good constitution perished from too much learning.
Elizabeth Gilbert
#34. To those of you who study history, economics, sociology, literature and language I present the challenge of the utilization of the enormous resources in our grasp to the problem of creating a genuinely good life for yourselves and your children.
Polykarp Kusch
#35. I'm a child of immigrants. That is the history of this country. Immigration is good and important for our country. Legal immigration needs to really be modernized.
John Barrasso
#36. SMALL BOY: Where do animals go when they die? SMALL GIRL: All good animals go to heaven, but the bad ones go to the Natural History Museum. - Caption to a drawing by E.H. Shepard, PUNCH, 1929 SIMON
Sarah R. Shaber
#37. Of course killing people is 'wrong', but I think history shows that sometimes it serves the greater good.
Zach Braff
#38. First black president ever, and to be living while it happened - that's a good part of history. That's probably the biggest person I admire right now.
Meek Mill
#39. We have a history," I say, "that no one can take from us. No matter what happened in the past, no matter what happens from here, it can't take away from the good thing we had. You were my first love, Demi. You only get one.
Winter Renshaw
#40. 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
#41. I'd love to do another 'Indiana Jones.' A character that has a history and a potential, kind of a rollicking good movie ride for the audience, Steven Spielberg as a director - what's not to like?
Harrison Ford
#42. When you think back in history about producers and artists or writers who've had good synergy, a lot of times they date, or they're married, or there's a friendship and a kinship.
Solange Knowles
#43. Everything bad happens to set up something good. I've always found that to be true. I think if most folks look back on the history of their lives, they'll see that.
John Sharp
#44. I think school is so important. I was good student. A rebel, but I did well in my studies. I don't close myself to anything. I liked reading and I still love learning. I loved history and German.
Bruno Tonioli
#45. So with each advance in understanding come new questions. So we need to be very humble. We shouldn't have hubris and think that we can understand everything. But history tells us that there is good reason to believe that we will continue making fantastic progress in the years ahead.
Max Tegmark
#46. When you look back in history and see other fighters coming back, it's never really been good for them.
Lennox Lewis
#47. If anybody had a sense of history, it wasn't me, I'll tell you that. I, I was just enjoying life and, and making a living and, and, you know, listening to all this good music. No, there was never in my mind any kind of sense of history, nothing.
Cosimo Matassa
#48. Sometimes things can take a very long time and still not be very good. It took us all of evolutionary history just to get where we are today, for instance, and mostly where we are today is on the couch.
Gina Barreca
#49. History should not be written to make the present generation feel good but to remind us that human affairs are complicated.
Margaret MacMillan
#50. I simply wanted to state that during this little slice of history, this is what happened and these were the good sides of it, these were the more dangerous sides of it, and this was the result.
Roland Joffe
#51. The art of living has no history: it does not evolve: the pleasure which vanishes vanishes for good, there is no substitute for it. Other pleasures come, which replace nothing. No progress in pleasures, nothing but mutations.
Roland Barthes
#52. Fear of death, wonder at the causes of chance events or unintelligible happenings, hope for divine aid and gratitude for good fortune, cooperated to generate religious belief.
Will Durant
#53. A Lady with a Lamp shall stand In the great history of the land, A noble type of good, Heroic womanhood.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#54. There are no heroes and there are no villains. There are just opposing points of view. That's all history is...the viciously long battle between world views.
Peter J. Tomasi
#55. The secret to the movie business, or any business, is to get a good education in a subject besides film - whether it's history, psychology, economics, or architecture - so you have something to make a movie about. All the skill in the world isn't going to help you unless you have something to say.
George Lucas
#56. History was full of the bones of good men who'd followed bad orders in the hope that they could soften the blow. Oh, yes, there were worse things they could do, but most of them began right where they started following bad orders.
Terry Pratchett
#57. Bauer's 'Criticism of the Gospel History' is worth a good dozen Lives of Jesus, because his work, as we are only now coming to recognise, after half a century, is the ablest and most complete collection of the difficulties of the Life of Jesus which is anywhere to be found.
Albert Schweitzer
#58. It's hard not to be kind of pessimistic about human beings generally, because we do tend to mess things up. If you just look at the history of extinctions, we've killed off an awful lot of animals - and I don't think we're doing a very good job of looking after the planet.
Bill Bryson
#59. 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
#60. Historians, I think, should be keepers of truth. We must tell things as they are - honestly, and without subversion. That is the greatest good one can do.
Robert Jackson Bennett
#61. From men motivated by moral certitude, history teaches, no lasting good ever comes.
Joseph Heller
#62. Statements that will hold good for all time are difficult to obtain in archaeology. The most that can be done at any one time is to report on the current state of knowledge.
Jennifer K. McArthur
#64. The basis on which the Good Friday agreement was constructed was in addressing those problems in the history of Northern Ireland, the social and constitutional problems as well as the military problems that have been unaddressed for centuries.
John Reid
#65. World War II is the greatest drama in human history, the biggest war ever and a true battle of good and evil. I imagine writers will continue to get stories from it, and readers will continue to love them, for many more years.
Ken Follett
#66. Most of the great triumphs and tragedies of history are caused not by people being fundamentally good or fundamentally evil, but by people being fundamentally people.
Terry Pratchett
#67. Once you were in the hands of a Grand Vizier, you were dead. Grand Viziers were always scheming megalomaniacs. It was probably in the job description: "Are you a devious, plotting, unreliable madman? Ah, good, then you can be my most trusted minister.
Terry Pratchett
#68. Though the contradictions of war seem sudden and simultaneous, history stalks before it strikes. Something tolerated soon becomes something good.
Anne Michaels
#69. I understand you only too well, but Rachel's needs are no less important than your desire to be part of history. Find a balance. Happiness is like good health. You only miss it when it disappears.
Tariq Ali
#70. It is good that war is so terrible, or we should become too fond of it
Robert E. Lee
Greg Seeley
#71. What do I want in a good fantasy book? Court politics and social interactions based around houses and cities. Powerful women and devious men. Drama and action with emotional ramifications. Frocks. Kissing. Swords. An intense impression of history in the world-building.
Tansy Rayner Roberts
#72. During the boom in velocipedes - known with good reason as 'boneshakers' - tyres were made of solid iron.
Robert Penn
#73. Believe me when I say that some of the most amazing music in history was made on equipment that's not as good as what you own right now.
Jol Dantzig
#74. No human being in history was all good or all bad, or all black or all white.
Anastasia Griffith
#76. 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
#77. War does one good - it teaches people geography.
Will Durant
#78. The world is very lucky to have America. It's got to be the first time in the whole history of the planet that a country has been the dominant force in the world and it has actually been a force for good ... America really deserves more credit.
Bill Bryson
#79. School was rough for me. I was a good student in middle school, but high school wasn't so fun. I still pulled through, though! I excelled in art, fashion, history and English literature - anything creative. Math and science I struggled a bit more in.
India De Beaufort
#80. What's the good of glory, magnificent renown, if in its flow it steams away to nothing?
Oedipus
#81. It begins with skepticism.147 The history of human folly, and our own susceptibility to illusions and fallacies, tell us that men and women are fallible. One therefore ought to seek good reasons for believing something.
Steven Pinker
#82. There are good people who are dealt a bad hand by fate, and bad people who live long, comfortable, privileged lives. A small twist of fate can save or end a life; random chance is a permanent, powerful player in each of our lives, and in human history as well.
Jeff Greenfield
#83. The more I travel, the more I see how important it is to each population to see that their history of the good and the bad is remembered by others.
Shane Claiborne
#84. Real solemn history, I cannot be interested in ... The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars and pestilences in every page; the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all.
Jane Austen
#85. It is hard to think of anything which more tragically and clearly exemplifies the phenomenon of good political intentions achieving the precise opposite of their aim.
A. N. Wilson
#86. God has been acting honorably throughout history regrading what He wants. We're the ones at fault. God is good. And I still really, truly like Him
Dee Henderson
#87. How many fears came between us? Earthquakes, diseases, wars where hell rained smoldering pus from skies made of winged death. Horror tore this world asunder. While inside the bleeding smoke and beyond the shredded weeping flesh we memorized tales of infinite good. -from The History Lesson
Aberjhani
#88. Human history is not the battle of good struggling to overcome evil. It is a battle fought by a great evil struggling to crush a small kernel of human kindness.
Vasily Grossman
#89. The strictly theoretical and so attractive dream of possible equality had been traded for the worst authoritarian nightmare in history when it was applied to reality, understood, with good reason (more, in this case), as the only criterion of truth.
Leonardo Padura
#90. Who created the sectarian attitude in Iraq? The occupation, ... We never heard of this before in our history. But it's good that Condoleezza Rice realizes sectarianism is not good for Iraq. All we want from them is fair and clean elections next month.
Saleh Al-Mutlaq
#91. But Clara's father believed that nations never see themselves clearly in the mirror, much less when war preys on their minds. He had a good understanding of history and knew that the future could be read much more clearly in the streets, factories, and barracks than in the morning press.
Carlos Ruiz Zafon
#92. I did some stage when I was a kid, around 16 or so. I was living in Melbourne and had a band. I was quite young. We weren't very good. Then I found a band in Perth. We played around for three years. We're in the 'History of Rock'N'Roll,' a book about Perth music.
Paul Eenhoorn
#93. Should we be rewriting history just to make people feel good? That's not history, that's psychiatry.
Ed Koch
#94. The parent must not give in to his desire to try to create the child he would like to have, but rather help the child to develop
in his own good time
to the fullest, into what he wishes to be and can be, in line with his natural endowment and as the consequence of his unique life in history.
Bruno Bettelheim
#95. The gospel is not mere forgiveness or grace, empty of content, but always refers to Jesus. So the gospel is good news about a human person who is God in our history, our world and who came to accomplish something in his life death and resurrection.
William McDavid
#96. If history records good things about good people, the thoughtful hearer is encouraged to imitate what is good; or if it records the evil of wicked people, the godly listener or reader is encouraged to avoid all that is sinful and bad, and to do what he knows to be good and pleasing to God.
Venerable Bede
#97. I wasn't particularly good at school so always found essay writing hard, so I didn't do that well at English or history, even though I enjoyed it.
Ruby Bentall
#98. A good deal of so-called atheism is itself, from my point of view, theologically significant. It is the working of God in history, and judgement upon the pious. An authentic prophet can be a radical critic of spurious piety, of sham spirituality.
James Luther Adams
#99. Good fiction is about asserting the beauties of the world, inventing a new, positive thing. Where am I going to get that? And it should be original; it should not be cliched. So the way I looked at history was not to accuse it of failure.
Orhan Pamuk
#100. I love history. It was the only thing I did well at in school. I'm not ashamed to admit that I was not a good student but I was great at history.
Steven Spielberg
