Top 100 Quotes About History Books
#1. The history that lies inert in unread books does no work in the world.
Carl Becker
#2. When Lafayette met him in 1775, the first volume of Raynal's 1770 History of the Two Indies had already been banned, which is to say it was a popular success, the Catholic Church's Index of Forbidden Books being the unofficial bestseller list of the day.
Sarah Vowell
#3. 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
#4. Serious affairs and history are carefully laid snares for the uninformed.
Dejan Stojanovic
#5. 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
#6. Novels arise out of the shortcoings of history.
Novalis
#7. A machine condemned to devour books and then throw them , in a changed form , on the dunghill of history .
Karl Marx
#8. If you think you have it tough, read history books.
Bill Maher
#9. Men tell stories. Women get on with it. For us it was a shadow war. There were no parades for us when it was over, no medals or mentions in history books. We did what we had to during the war, and when it was over, we picked up the pieces and started our lives over.
Kristin Hannah
#10. Jews read the books of Moses not just as history but as divine command. The question to which they are an answer is not, 'What happened?' but rather, 'How then shall I live?' And it's only with the exodus that the life of the commands really begins.
Jonathan Sacks
#11. When kids don't learn about their own heritage in school, they just don't care about school ... But you won't see it in the history books unless we get the power to write our own history and tell our story ourselves.
Miles Davis
#12. When you juice books from a library you are taking the history and imagination that has accumulated over so many years there.
S.A. Tawks
#13. The White Queen in many ways it is representative of the sort of drama that I'm talking about. The books by Philippa Gregory were best sellers and they specifically told the story of history from the point of view of women.
Colin Callender
#14. I didn't need a timequake to teach me being alive was a crock of shit. i already knew that from my childhood and crucifixes and history books.
Kurt Vonnegut
#15. James II's second wife, an Italian Catholic princess called Mary (at the time, there was an edict whereby all female royals were to be called Mary to confuse future readers of history books),
Stephen Clarke
#16. I make a rod for my own back because people see my novels as quasi documentaries. But it is never history that's the main event of my books. It's my characters.
Christopher Koch
#17. I'm not an overnight success. My early publishing history, through my first five books, was unfortunate in many respects, typified by a couple of short anecdotes.
John Lescroart
#18. History is the lie. History's words stain otherwise pristine books, drops of inky poison frosted in sugared deception.
Courtney M. Privett
#19. With the publication of this book we, as non-Jews, are doing our small part to stand up for the truth. So let us state unequivocally here and now: the Holocaust happened EXACTLY as per the history books. Period. Fact. No debate whatsoever.
James Morcan
#20. We used to root for the Indians against the cavalry, because we didn't think it was fair in the history books that when the cavalry won it was a great victory, and when the Indians won it was a massacre.
Dick Gregory
#21. We do what we must to earn our place in the community, but we live for the hours at home. For each other, for the children. It will never get me written up in the history books.
Orson Scott Card
#22. Somehow, I realized I could write books about black characters who reflected my own experiences or otherworldly experiences - not just stories of history, poverty and oppression.
Tananarive Due
#23. What's important about the artists we learn about in art history and see in all the art books is that they have somehow pushed the boundaries of what people think art is or should be, and that's how they've made their work relevant. That's what I'm trying to figure out for myself.
Kadir Nelson
#24. Learning from books is so empowering - whether it be from history, a novel or a poem. When you come away from reading having learned something, you yourself are bigger.
Lisa Lucas
#25. Politicians against gay marriage now, are the future villains of our American History books.
Natalie Maines
#26. Well named, Quotology contains everything you always wanted to know about quotations, quoters, quotees, quotation books, 'quoox' (quotations out of context), and their fascinating history.
Marjorie Garber
#27. I've been going to the library, looking up our history. There's a ton of it in anthropology books, a ton of it, Ruth. We haven't always been hated. Why didn't we grow up knowing that?
Leslie Feinberg
#28. When real substantive change happens it's the people who watch your show, they're the ones that make it happen. It's people whose names are not highlighted in history books. They're the ones that stand up in their place and time to make change.
Tom Morello
#29. History books that contain no lies are extremely dull.
Anatole France
#30. Feminism rotates between backlash and interest. And the cool thing about the Internet is that it's allowing women more access to their own history. Part of the problem before the Internet was that we didn't know which books to read. Someone had to tell you.
Kathleen Hanna
#31. Lilia did not believe in miracles outside of history books, but she was beginning to believe in her own power, and that was a more frightening thing to believe in.
Kameron Hurley
#32. I'm beyond thrilled to be working with Faber, whose literary history is second to none. And I'm even more excited to bring my books to a wider audience in the U.K.
John Corey Whaley
#33. Historical novels are, without question, the best way of teaching history, for they offer the human stories behind the events and leave the reader with a desire to know more.
Louis L'Amour
#34. History is written by the winners. The books say the Indians were bad guys and the whites just needed a little land. It's like, Excuse me, let me take your car. I'm discovering it. I'm putting my flag on your windshield.
Mario Van Peebles
#35. When you realize that your history books and your science books and your literature books are not the result of experts sitting down and making it a wise decision, but of political pressure groups coming to the state textbook hearings, this is wrong.
Diane Ravitch
#36. History is always written by the winners. When two cultures clash, the loser is obliterated, and the winner writes the history books-books which glorify their own cause and disparage the conquered foe. As Napoleon once said, 'What is history, but a fable agreed upon?
Dan Brown
#37. I brewed potions in a vain search for life everlasting, I read books, I sang songs of history, And today I've come home to Cold Mountain To pillow my head on the stream and wash my ears.
Hanshan
#38. I considered that I had to write stories about the people I had met, with whom I'd worked, the history of my books - just in case I up and die.
Anatoly Rybakov
#39. As you grow older and young people come up to you with their history books, you realize that some of the things I have been able to do have been impactful. But for me, I try to keep everything in perspective and stay humble.
Jackie Joyner-Kersee
#40. The most important events in every age never reach the history books.
C.S. Lewis
#41. old books -- little tombstones of ideas and history
Amy Tan
#42. I find that the history books that we teach our kids with are not fully truthful, in my opinion.
Jesse Ventura
#44. It's in the history books, the Holocaust. It's just a phrase. And the truth is it happened yesterday. It happened to my mother. I never met my grandmothers or my grandfathers. They were all wiped up in the gas chambers of Nazi Germany.
Gene Simmons
#45. History books are being re-written all the time
Andy Warhol
#46. ... books are a very recent means of expression in the broad sweep of history, capable of changing the world and toppling tyrants.
Nina George
#47. People come from all over the world to see this little place they've seen in movies and read about in history books: Soho.
Marc Almond
#49. History books are filled with lies. Whoever wins the war tells the story.
Stephanie Perkins
#50. Whoever thinks war allows for lasting victories should take a look at European history books and learn their lesson.
Frank-Walter Steinmeier
#51. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled.
Barbara Tuchman
#52. Of course we all know people who aren't cut out for college, but I know it's a mistake to think of education only as a route to a better career. Reading books, studying history - all these things contribute to making us better citizens, too.
Rebecca Mead
#53. With the '39 Clues,' we were making history jump out of the page for the readers, so they don't know they're learning. The kids can't put the books down - it's so exciting.
Peter Lerangis
#54. I knew always that Holland gave away the most Jews of all the countries. We are not the heroes that are in the history books.
Carice Van Houten
#55. Unless we change our ways and our direction, our greatness as a nation will soon be a footnote in the history books, a distant memory of an offshore island, lost in the mist of time like Camelot, remembered kindly for its noble past.
Margaret Thatcher
#56. I grew up around books - my grandmother's house, where I lived as a small child, was full of books. My father was a history teacher, and he loved the Russian novels. There were always books around.
John Irving
#57. What's interesting is that when you get into the post-war period, many of the narratives in books and movies conclude that if you killed Hitler, you're actually going to make history worse.
Gavriel David Rosenfeld
#58. We have such a great depth of human history in all of the arts, whether it's opera or mathematics or painting or classical music or jazz. There's so many things to study, new books to read, and certainly always ways to transform old ideas and to come up with new ones.
Patti Smith
#59. A little library, growing every year, is an honorable part of a man's history. It is a man's duty to have books.
Henry Ward Beecher
#60. Everything was going my way. I was happily marching into the history books. Then it all just fell apart.
George Michael
#61. As a historian, I love every little detail, but whole long passages about wood paneling and journeys on horseback and every stop at every inn had to go out the window. I decided the history in the books should be like spice in a soup - a little went a long way. Like cilantro.
Deborah Harkness
#62. Isn't a normal night. It's the kind of evening remembered in history books. You know history, which only winners write, and forge it the way they like?
Cameron Jace
#63. The Labor Party has always - always been praised as leaders. In fact, there's probably more books written about ALP leaders and the ALP people than the Libs or anyone else in Australian's history, but there was substance to it.
Warren Mundine
#64. I believe books will never disappear. It is impossible for it to happen. Of all man's diverse tools, undoubtedly the most astounding are his books ... If books were to disappear, history would disappear. So would man.
Jorge Luis Borges
#65. In 1891 the Brazilian Minister of Finance decreed the abolition of history; he ordered the destruction of every document which dealt in any way with slavery or the slave trade; a nation-wide burning of the books.
Manu Herbstein
#66. When I was in school, all our history books were American, so we learned American history, not Canadian history.
Dave Foley
#67. What I did do a lot as a child was read, and I particularly remember reading all the 'Hardy Boys' books, a set of history books called the 'Landmark Books,' and a series of science books called the 'All About Books.'
Martin Chalfie
#68. I have more wisdom than any books ever written in history of times, any scripture ever written which you rhyme but this is not my purpose.
Santosh Kalwar
#69. I just read anything I could find. Fairy tales and mysteries and history and poetry. It didn't matter what it was. I would read it over and over and over again. The books, they helped keep me from losing my mind all together.
Tahereh Mafi
#70. Old books exert a strange fascination for me
their smell, their feel, their history; wondering who might have owned them, how they lived, what they felt.
Lauren Willig
#71. People are reading. In fact, due to social media they are reading more than any time in history. Now we must find a way to get them to include books in all that reading. It starts with us writers doing a better job of writing.
Will Gibson
#72. I feel a kind of reverence for the first books of young authors.
There is so much aspiration in them,
so much audacious hope and trembling fear,
so much of the heart's history, that all errors
and shortcomings are for a while lost sight of
in the amiable self assertion of youth.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#73. Without words, without writing and without books there would be no history, there could be no concept of humanity.
Hermann Hesse
#74. I have three libraries. As a gift, a friend alphabetized and organized my main library of novels, history books, and nonfiction. Then I have a photo-book collection. Then there's this nearly whole room of my childhood books. I've also got cookbooks and a big collection of horse-related books.
Sally Mann
#75. The real history never makes the books;
April White
#76. I got interested in palaeontology and vertebrate history - sparked by books on human evolution - then vertebrate evolution. Studying with palaeontologists kindled my interest in fieldwork.
Greg Graffin
#77. Books won't stay banned. They won't burn. Ideas won't go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas. The source of better ideas is wisdom. The surest path to wisdom is a liberal education.
Alfred Whitney Griswold
#78. All the ills of mankind, all the tragic misfortunes that fill the history books, all the political blunders, all the failures of the great leaders have arisen merely from a lack of skill at dancing.
Moliere
#79. Each Inspirational Messenger who was and has been acknowledged in the history books was done so because of the way they chose to live. Their life had a core message that was central to their years, whether they exemplified and expressed whenever they took a step in the world.
Emily Gowor
#80. I think publishing's strength is also its weakness. It's got such a rich and celebrated history as an industry. For the most part, publishing people are incredibly creative, business is done based on the strength of relationships, and the product being peddled is books.
Jennifer Gilmore
#81. This is where you and I are headed ... Look for us in history books and you'll find us in the margins. Look for us in legends and you might just find us celebrated
Scott Lynch
#82. I think that's not a question that one can answer accurately. I read a whole range of books, quite a lot of history at the time, and still do read a lot. I read very widely.
John Hume
#83. All the proliferating falsifications of what I and everyone I know experienced once in what it is now so convenient to call the "fifties" or "sixties," as if life was really measured or lived in arbitrary decades, when the history books are sold like comix.
Lester Bangs
#84. I myself am convinced that the theory of evolution, especially to the extent to which it has been applied, will be one of the greatest jokes in the history books of the future. Posterity will marvel that so very flimsy and dubious an hypothesis could be accepted with the incredible credulity it has.
Malcolm Muggeridge
#85. A little library, growing larger every year, is an honourable part of a man's history. It is a man's duty to have books. A library is not a luxury, but one of the necessaries of life.
Henry Ward Beecher
#86. We glorify those who left their names in history books at the expense of those contributors about whom our books are silent. We humans are not just a superficial race - we are a very unfair one.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
#87. I love fiction because in fiction you go into the thoughts of people, the little people, the people who were defeated, the poor, the women, the children that are never in history books.
Isabel Allende
#88. Old. Old is relative, girl. No, what makes them special is that they are books from history.
Hannah Crow
#89. Generations of devoted American history buffs have spent countless hours reading and writing long books about the American Revolution without ever having come across the name of Dr. Thomas Young. Yet it was Young who came up with the idea for the original tea party - the one in Boston Harbor.
Matthew Stewart
#90. But the participants [in war] never forgot the details of their experience, and like the Wandering Jew, they were condemned to remain their own history books, each containing a story they could not pass on to others and from which no one would learn anything of value.
James Lee Burke
#91. In a few years, it is very likely that this series will be considered a milestone in the history of Singapore photography.
Raphael Millet
#92. My process for determining which eras I'd write about was to just read history books that gave a really broad overview of Chinese history. And when I came across a historical figure or a historical incident that was especially interesting to me, ideas for characters and stories would surface.
Susan Barker
#93. Books tap the wisdom of our species
the greatest minds, the best teachers
from all over the world and from all our history. And they're patient.
Carl Sagan
#94. And the history books forgot about us, and the bible didn't mention us
Regina Spektor
#95. The contents of someone's bookcase are part of his history, like an ancestral portrait.
(About Books; Recoiling, Rereading, Retelling, New York Times, February 22, 1987)
Anatole Broyard
#96. I have carefully and regularly perused the Holy Scriptures, and am of opinion that the volume contains more sublimity, purer morality, more important history, and finer strains of eloquence, than can be collected from all other books, in whatever language they may have been written.
William Jones
#97. Every child in America should be acquainted with his own country. He should read books that furnish him with ideas that will be useful to him in life and practice. As soon as he opens his lips, he should rehearse the history of his own country.
Noah Webster
#98. It always amazes me that Japanese comics have, like, 200 pages. How do they do that? They're fat books; it's a whole different kind of comic that's very close to their films. So I'm drawing from that history and bringing it here - bringing it to Katana.
Ann Nocenti
#100. It followed then that when Hitler burned a book I felt it as keenly, please forgive me, as his killing a human, for in the long sum of history they are one and the same flesh.
Ray Bradbury
