Top 100 True History Quotes
#1. 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
#2. People kept on talking about the true king of Ankh-Morpork, but history taught a cruel lesson. It said - often in words of blood - that the true king was the one who got crowned."
Terry Pratchett
#3. Well, is true. I did know. Because if possible to paint fakes that look like that? Las Vegas would be the most beautiful city in the history of earth!
Donna Tartt
#4. Sudden falls can come to societies that know too little history or that have furnished their minds with easy one-note propaganda in place of the true complexity and terrible beauty of the storied past.
Dean Koontz
#5. The real comfort is that the history of the world contains so much grief that my small griefs are edged out, and are only cinders at the borders of the fire. I am saying this again because I want it to be true.
Sebastian Barry
#6. 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
#7. 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
#8. Crimes of which a people is ashamed constitute its real history. The same is true of man.
Jean Genet
#9. Somebody made the statement that Donald Trump has built or owns the greatest collection of golf courses, ever, in the history of golf. And I believe that is 100 percent true.
Donald Trump
#10. There is an old saying: In history nothing is true but the names and dates. In fiction everything is true but the names and dates. The difference between reality and fiction? Fiction has to make sense.
Tom Clancy
#11. It's no mystery, Just look at the history, Brave and valiant, strong and true, The victors wear royal blue!
L.R.W. Lee
#12. It's very true that an artist who networks well will have better opportunities than one who doesn't network well. But great networking skills without great art won't change art history.
Mark Kostabi
#13. Benedict and Bernard and the other true monastic peacemakers of history have been effective because they have acted from a deep source of peace within themselves, dating a context for peace. This is the contribution a Christian man or woman of peace can make.
M. Basil Pennington
#14. This simple inability to remember not the true sequence of events but a reconstructed one will make history appear in hindsight to be far more explainable than it actually was - or is.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
#15. It is the true office of history to represent the events themselves, together with the counsels, and to leave the observations and conclusions thereupon to the liberty and faculty of every man's judgment
Francis Bacon
#16. 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
#17. I am the longest- serving independent in the history of the United States Congress. People of Vermont sent me to Washington as an independent. That is true.
Bernie Sanders
#18. These descendants divined myths in what was really history, for true memories were forgotten in chaos as vast arrays of daivi astras used in the Great War ravaged the land. That war destroyed almost everything. It took centuries for India to regain its old cultural vigour and intellectual depth.
Amish Tripathi
#19. Official history is merely a veil to hide the truth of what really happened. When the veil is lifted, again and again we see that not only is the official version not true, it is often 100% wrong.
David Icke
#20. As a general rule, no one should ever be allowed to say there is no history of racial tension here, because that sentence has never been true anywhere on Earth,
John Oliver
#21. Our memory is made up of our individual memories and our collective memories. The two are intimately linked. And history is our collective memory. If our collective memory is taken from us - is rewritten - we lose the ability to sustain our true selves.
Haruki Murakami
#22. I shall cheerfully bear the reproach of having descended below the dignity of history if I can succeed in placing before the English of the nineteenth century a true picture of the life of their ancestors.
Thomas Babington Macaulay
#23. 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
#24. It may be remarked in passing that success is an ugly thing. Men are deceived by its false resemblances to merit. To the crowd, success wears almost the features of true mastery, and the greatest dupe of this counterfeit talent is History.
Victor Hugo
#25. Only in a secular history where men and women are freed for unexpected true humanity can God reveal his own being.
Edward Schillebeeckx
#26. There are no absolute truths, and the best historians know that. You strive to capture a moment of time, and if your work is done properly, history becomes a written photograph.
Gloria Naylor
#27. 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
#28. To come very near to a true theory, and to grasp its precise application, are two different things, as the history of science teaches us. Everything of importance has been said before by someone who did not discover it.
Alfred North Whitehead
#29. True. We both could. One of these days our search history is going to tip off the NSA and then we're going to be in trouble. It was a valid worry for a writer.
Chelsea M. Cameron
#30. Any true student must realize that History has no beginning. Regardless of where a story starts, there are always earlier heroes and earlier tragedies.
Brian Herbert
#31. That genius is a rare exception ( It's not true. Talent and genius have been wasted on enormous scale throughout our history; this is all I know for sure.
Eric Hoffer
#32. Revolutionaries - true revolutionaries - are aggressive, ruthless, and generally seize the main chance, as William Henry Drayton did when he saw that stump-speaking was getting him nowhere. But defenders of the status quo tend toward caution and legalisms and inaction until it is too late
John Buchanan
#33. China has had a long and complex history and has managed to evolve its own culture for 4,000 years. It therefore not necessarily true that we know exactly what is best for the internal structure of China.
Henry A. Kissinger
#34. For decades, this great leader, often at Dr. King's side, was denied his rightful place in history because he was openly gay. No medal can change that, but today, we honor Bayard Rustin's memory by taking our place in his march towards true equality, no matter who we are or who we love.
Barack Obama
#35. True love, and what it is, and how do you know what it is. Is it just chemistry, or is it years and years of commitment and being together and hanging in there building a history? And how do you find both?
Patricia Heaton
#36. My true love is history, but I didn't know how I could make a living at it.
Robert Zoellick
#37. "History repeats itself" and "History never repeats itself" are about equally true ... We never know enough about the infinitely complex circumstances of any past event to prophesy the future by analogy.
G. M. Trevelyan
#38. The talent of historians lies in their creating a true ensemble out of facts which are but half true.
Ernest Renan
#40. Never in the history of the world have we had easier access to more information - some of it true, some of it false, and much of it partially true. Consequently, never in the history of the world has it been more important to learn how to correctly discern between truth and error.
Dieter F. Uchtdorf
#41. Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing true or beautiful makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore, we are saved by love.
Reinhold Niebuhr
#42. True heroes don't fall. They only encounter temporary setbacks as they forge ahead towards progress.
Janvier Chouteu-Chando
#43. It's been by turns frustrating and fascinating and wonderful beyond imagination. If what I suspect is true, it's one of the most important milestones in human history to acknowledge that we are not alone in the universe.
Steven M. Greer
#44. We are at a major epoch in human history, which is that we don't need sex to recreate the race. You can have babies without sex. This is the first time in human history that has been true, and it means, for example, we could do some extraordinary things.
David Cronenberg
#45. History is the recital of facts represented as true. Fable, on the other hand, is the recital of facts represented as fiction.
Voltaire
#46. There is a long history of monetary experience. It tells us that government is at heart a counterfeiter and therefore cannot be trusted to control money, and that this is true of both autocratic and popular government.
Garet Garrett
#47. All fairy tales, Tolkien argued, echo the gospel of Jesus Christ in some way because the gospel is the True Story; it's the real fairy tale that crashed into the time line of history... 'The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact,' Lewis wrote
Sarah Arthur
#48. True leadership will not be measured by the ability to muzzle dissent, or to intimidate and harass political opponents at home. The people of the world want change. They will not long tolerate those who are on the wrong side of history.
Barack Obama
#49. True holy war in human history has ceased because Jesus has fought its last episode on the cross.
Karen H. Jobes
#50. The evidence shows you that two things have been true throughout mankind's history: One, things always get better. Two, people always think they're getting worse.
Penn Jillette
#51. The teachings of Elijah Muhammad on how black people have been brainwashed.How they've been taught to love white and hate black, how we've been robbed of our names in slavery.We were robbed of our culture, we were robbed of our true history. So it left us a walking dead man.
Muhammad Ali
#52. I've left Boro in the Premiership, which was always what I wanted to do. Actually that's not quite true. I took them to three cup finals, where they'd never been before. But I had set my eyes on being the first manager in their history to deliver a major trophy.
Bryan Robson
#53. (on A History of Western Philosophy) I was sometimes accused by reviewers of writing not a true history but a biased account of the events that I arbitrarily chose to write of. But to my mind, a man without a bias cannot write interesting history - if, indeed, such man exists.
Bertrand Russell
#54. 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
#55. One forgets that part of one's performance is one's history - or sometimes the lack of it. You're playing against what an audience knows, what they expect. This seems to be true of all performers; there's baggage that gets carried into the venue that we can't see.
David Byrne
#56. Physics advances by accepting absurdities. Its history is one of unbelievable ideas proving to be true.
Rivka Galchen
#57. Reading history, one rarely gets the feeling of the true nature of scientific development, in which the element of farce is as great as the element of triumph.
David Gross
#58. History is the only true teacher, the revolution the best school for the proletariat.
Rosa Luxemburg
#59. True education does not consist merely in the acquiring of a few facts of science, history, literature, or art, but in the development of character.
David O. McKay
#60. I think we fool ourselves and really negate a great deal of history if we think that the oral history of poetry is shorter than the written history of poetry. It's not true. Poetry has a longer oral tradition than it does written.
Saul Williams
#61. I believe that individuals nowadays are probably more aware of their inner loneliness than has ever been true before in history.
Carl R. Rogers
#62. Evolution has encountered no intellectual trouble; no new arguments have been offered. Creationism is a home-grown phenomenon of American sociocultural history-a splinter movement ... who believe that every word in the Bible must be literally true, whatever such a claim might mean.
Stephen Jay Gould
#63. Every believer is an anarchist at heart. True believers would rather see governments topple and history rewritten than scuff the cover of their faith.
Jeanette Winterson
#64. We must delve deep into history the better to engage a true dialogue of civilisations. Fear of the present can impose upon the past its own biased vision.
Tariq Ramadan
#65. There is an intimate connection between our moral life and our intellectual life. Sometimes I think the history of our times can be described as an argument about whether or not this connection is true.
James V. Schall
#66. If one religion were 'true,' we would expect to see, even if only once in all of recorded history, a religious missionary that had stumbled upon a culture that shared the same revelations - brought forth by the same deity.
David G. McAfee
#67. There is always a danger that those who are less obviously and traditionally important, prominent, or powerful will be left out of the history of human experience.
Chloe Schama
#68. The "called" get so puffed up with how important they think their service is to God's success, they assume God will compensate for their lack of parenting skills. A short study in sociological history will reveal this isn't true, never has been true, and likely never will be true of God.
Linda Rios Brook
#69. In any true life you must go and be exposed outside the small circle that encompasses two or three heads in the same history of love.
Saul Bellow
#70. Where I'm from, we believe in all sorts of things that aren't true ... we call it history.
Gregory Maguire
#71. I just want to hear the true voices of women self-expressing - smart ones, stupid ones, ugly ones, beautiful ones, good ones, bad ones, fat ones, thin ones, all of it - until the profound silence that has resounded throughout history is filled with a healthy chorus coming from our side of the aisle.
Liz Phair
#72. History repeats itself, you sang. I wonder if that's true. If there's a hurt
that's buried in us, maybe it keeps fi nding its way through.
Ava Dellaira
#73. An artist has an obligation to tell the truth. [ ... ] that the true horrors of human history derive not from orcs and Dark Lords, but from ourselves. We are the monsters. (And the heroes too). Each of us has within himself the capacity for great good, and great evil.
George R R Martin
#74. British Statesman, parliamentary orator and political thinker, Edmund Burke once said, "Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it." This is true to say the least.
Robert Paulson
#75. In my view, the gospels are true, not historically, but theologically, or, as I would argue, prophetically! What we have is, the Messiah's history written in advance in story form.
Eli Of Kittim
#76. No one is going to give you the education you need to overthrow them. Nobody is going to teach you your true history, teach you your true heroes, if they know that that knowledge will help set you free.
Assata Shakur
#77. The God of freedom, the true God, is ... not recognized by his power and glory in the history of the world, but through his helplessness and his death on the scandal of the cross of Jesus
Jurgen Moltmann
#78. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith.
Reinhold Niebuhr
#79. It is true that the Muslim world is not totally mistaken when it reproaches the West of Christian tradition of moral decadence and the manipulation of human life ... Islam has also had moments of great splendor and decadence in the course of its history.
Pope Benedict XVI
#80. Adolf Hitler! Ken, it makes me furious. Forty million people die to defeat that megalomaniac, and he's the star of the first broadcast to another civilization? He's representing us. And them. It's that madman's dream come true.
Carl Sagan
#81. There are two things that have been true throughout history in big hunks. You can find differences in ten years, but in 50 year hunks, 100 years hunks, you'll find two things to be true. One, the world is always getting better. Two, people always think it's getting worse.
Penn Jillette
#82. It is true Christians have done terrible things throughout history. But they've always been acting in opposition to their Christian faith. There are no New Testament verses that say, Kill unbelievers.
Robert Jeffress
#83. The conservative interpretation of American history says that wherever the word 'God' appears, it's obviously our God, it's obviously a Christian God; it's usually an evangelical God. The simplest point I'm making is: That is just absolutely not true.
Matthew Stewart
#84. True history being a mixture of all things, the true historian mingles in everything.
Victor Hugo
#85. The true fanatic is a theocrat, someone who sees himself as acting on behalf of some super-personal force: the Race, the Party, History, the Proletariat, the Poor, and so on. These absolve him from evil, hence he may safely do anything in their service.
Lloyd Billingsley
#86. There is one true history And one true future. Listen well, For the child sprung from misery Will be the one to bring hope. From the weakest will come strength. From the hunted will come freedom. - Song of Venda
Mary E. Pearson
#87. Posterity gives every man his true value.
Tacitus
#88. I suppose history always did have in it a large bit of the perspective of those who wrote it. People tend to make their own truth of what was right loom larger than other truths just as true but somehow less favorable to telling.
Na'ama Yehuda
#89. People who aren't afraid to live aren't afraid to die.
Carol Fiore
#90. I couldn't miss Percy's fifteenth birthday," Poseidon said. "Why, if this were Sparta, Percy would be a man today!"
"That's true," Paul said. "I used to teach ancient history."
Poseidon's eyes twinkled. "That's me. Ancient history.
Rick Riordan
#91. One of the enduring problems with certain societies in the world - and this is certainly true of a lot of places in the Middle East - is that the capacity for self-governance and self-organizing just isn't there. It has to do with history.
P. J. O'Rourke
#92. Names are very important for humans, aren't they? How do I translate for you the name of this town as it seems to me, the true name that tells of its history and people and lands and weather and ... everything?
Karen Lord
#93. That rewriting of literary history is most obvious in the case of The Yage Letters, where I was able to show that the true history inverts the official one.
Oliver Harris
#94. 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
#95. The true history of my administration will be written 50 years from now, and you and I will not be around to see it.
George W. Bush
#96. Who doesn't know that the first law of history is not to dare to say anything false, and the second is not to refrain from saying anything true?
Marcus Tullius Cicero
#97. I would choose the heat above an equal degree of chill. The evidence of natural history points to a tropical origin for our species, and I believe it to be true.
Marie Brennan
#98. If a reader believes that everything in nonfiction or history is just objectively true, I don't really know what to tell them, except that at least in fiction, the choice of what perspective and bias to tell a given story from - which is always a deliberate choice - is foregrounded and clear.
Kathleen Rooney
#99. Ay me! For aught that I could every read,
Could ever hear by tale or history,
The course of true love never did run smooth,
But either it was different in blood-
William Shakespeare
#100. What makes a loft authentic isn't its layout or its history but its ability to give people a true home - a dwelling that reflects their personalities and aspirations, including their dreams of urbanity.
Virginia Postrel
