Why History Quotes

#1. American policy seems to be wed to a perpetual state of war. Why? History shows that the world will always be in flux or turmoil, with different peoples competing for visibility and power. The U.S. cannot fix the fate of every nation.

Camille Paglia

#2. I had a sudden notion of why history is such a mess: humans do not live long enough. We only learn from experience and have no time to use it in a continuous and sensible way.

Martha Gellhorn

#3. It is pleasant to be transferred from an office where one is afraid of a sergeant-major into an office where one can intimidate generals, and perhaps this is why history is so attractive to the more timid among us. We can recover self-confidence by snubbing the dead.

E. M. Forster

#4. The need to recreate the myth of coherence may be one of the reasons why history exists in the first place. Never

Stephen King

#5. Matrilineal succession is the only thing that makes sense as far as I'm concerned, since you always know who the mother is, and the father could be anyone. Most of the royal dynasties of the world didn't agree with me though, which is why history is filled with idiot kings.

April White

#6. We may want to believe that previous world wars and economic depressions have awakened people from their deep sleep, but they didn't and that's why history keeps repeating itself.

Daniel Marques

#7. The word Palestine always brought to my mind a vague suggestion of a country as large as the United States. I do not know why, but such was the case. I suppose it was because I could not conceive of a small country having so large a history.

Mark Twain

#8. Even though sugar was very expensive, people consumed it till their teeth turned black, and if their teeth didn't turn black naturally, they blackened them artificially to show how wealthy and marvelously self-indulgent they were.

Bill Bryson

#9. I just don't see why the past has to matter.

Cassandra Clare

#10. You know why I like to talk to you, Delia? You never interrupt with your experiences. Not jiggling your foot till you get a chance to jump in with your life history.

Anne Tyler

#11. He said the reason we studied history was to find out why things were the way they were, how we got here. He said you could do anything you wanted to people who didn't know their history. That was the way a totalitarian system worked.

Janet Fitch

#12. We gotta control inflation, quit spending our money on everything. But this years tax increase, why it's the biggest in history.

Hank Williams Jr.

#13. I'm driven by history and our past. That's why I work in gold. It's in your veins. We've been lusting after gold since the beginning of time. God, glory, and gold.

Waris Ahluwalia

#14. My object will be, first, to show by what connections the history of the fossil bones of land animals is linked to the theory of the earth and why they have a particular importance in this respect.

Georges Cuvier

#15. You gotta live in the moment. I don't care what you've done in your life, it has nothing to do with what you're gonna do or what you can do. The past is history, tomorrow is a mystery. But today is a gift-that's why they call it the present.

Mike Ditka

#16. History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. History is who we are and why we are the way we are.

David McCullough

#17. Why would I talk about the past when I got a bright future? What kind of money is the past gonna make me? Everyone wants to know information. Now, if you wanna know information, if you want history, you're gonna read a history book. The past ain't gonna make you no cash.

Riff Raff

#18. I always wonder about people's history and their lives, especially people that are a little bit more distant, who obviously have had some kind of a thing, and you know there's some reason why they're not able to connect. It's not because they don't want to. They don't have the ability.

Annette Bening

#19. His [Michael Jackson] behavior was weird, but when you get an artist and a genius, many of the geniuses throughout our whole history were weird. And they did weird things because none of us could understand what was on their mind and why they did what they did.

Berry Gordy

#20. In the complete overall history of tennis, I figure I'll be worth a sentence or two ... That's why my place in the all-time rankings means so very little to me, because I know I won't be anybody's number one, and it's that same old thing: if you're not number one, then what does it really matter?

Billie Jean King

#21. Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?

Ralph Waldo Emerson

#22. 'Memory.' 'Race.' 'Murder.' That's what they say about me. I am an elegiac poet. I have some historical questions, and I'm grappling with ways to make sense of history; why it still haunts us in our most intimate relationships with each other, but also in our political decisions.

Natasha Trethewey

#23. If you listen to Giuliani, it's like nobody did anything to improve the city except him. I'm not part of the history. Bloomberg's not part of the history. It's like, he did it. He's the only one. That's why he's a little crazy.

Ed Koch

#24. It is the future, of course, which politicians grapple with, and that is why politics is so disorderly. Only history clears away some of the debris.

Madeleine M. Kunin

#25. On July 4th, we renew our commitment to the American Idea-the belief that all men are created equal. We read the Declaration. We tell our kids the history. We remember those who died to protect our country. And along the way, we remind ourselves of why we love it.

Paul Ryan

#26. The reason why truth is so hard to be revealed
is because there are so many current practices
that would soon turn into a great history of bullshit.

Toba Beta

#27. History,' Mari muttered, as if she'd overheard his thoughts. 'Why do we need to know what happened before we were born?'
'So hopefully we get smarter and don't make the same mistakes again.

Cinda Williams Chima

#28. After all, history proved that eventually, everyone leaves me. Why would you be any different?
Now I know that you were.
Are.

Leisa Rayven

#29. Why would you create a movie for black people if you don't understand the history and perspective of the people you are doing it for? You need historical perspective to make sound decisions.

Tim Reid

#30. People have lost their history, the what and how and why of things. They know so little of the places where they live.

Dean Koontz

#31. All the common people want is to be left alone. All the ordinary soldier wants is to collect his pay and not get killed. That's why the great forces of history can be manipulated by astonishingly small groups of determined people.

Orson Scott Card

#32. There's a good reason why nobody studies history, it just teaches you too much.

Noam Chomsky

#33. And everyone wants to know: Who? Why? The victims ask the hardest of all the questions: How is it possible that the person I loved so much lit no spark of humanity in you?

Antjie Krog

#34. If you focus on the world's deficiencies and stop there, then you'll probably feel horrible and paralyzed. But why stop there? It's intellectually dishonest to focus on what's wrong with the world without acknowledging our rich history of overcoming incredible odds.

T.K. Coleman

#35. You know that's history, that's why some people say that my stuff is retro, but I don't agree.

Marc Newson

#36. I do not know why, because that is not my job, but history shows that every time a teenage boy opens a permanent marker, he will first sniff it before deciding how to go about defacing the planet.

Andrew Smith

#37. Biology alone cannot provide an answer to the question that concerns us: why is woman the Other? The question is how, in her, nature has been taken on in the course of history; the question is what humanity has made of the human female.

Simone De Beauvoir

#38. The weight of history swings on choices. To understand why people make the choices they do is to understand the whole of history and most of the future.

Lance Conrad

#39. Why? What is so wonderful about mass murder that nobody in the history of the world has ever fond any smarter solution to problems than killing everybody who doesn't agree? Is that the limit of human intelligence?

Richard Bach

#40. The slave trade was globalism. Why people insist that globalism, after its hideous history, is a good thing, I do not know.

Jamaica Kincaid

#41. 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

#42. Why be an average person? All the great achievements of history have been made by strong individuals who refused to consult statistics or to listen to those who could prove convincingly that what they wanted to do, and in fact ultimately did do, was completely impossible.

Eric Butterworth

#43. Why is 'Game of Thrones' the most pirated show in the history of TV? Because people can't get it fast enough, that's why.

Kevin Spacey

#44. It is quite rare for God to provide a great man at the necessary moment to carry out some great deep, which is why when this unusual combination of circumstance does occur, history at once records the name of the chosen one and recommends him to the admiration of posterity.

Alexandre Dumas

#45. He wished someone in the course of history had thought of striking that word and all its derivatives from the English Language - happy, happier, happiest, happiness. What the devil did the words really mean anyway? Why not just the word pleasure, which was far more ... well, pleasant.

Mary Balogh

#46. Moammar Gaddafi, who has called himself the 'Guide of the First of September Great Revolution of the Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya,' should go down in history with the Emperor Bokassa and Idi Amin as a grotesque reminder of why people have the right to change their government.

Elliott Abrams

#47. Every day is precious. You will never live THIS day again. It is ONE event in human history. Why not make it count? Time is a nonrenewable resource.

Kristen Lamb

#48. I never imagined that divorce would be part of my life history or my family's legacy. When people say that divorce can be more painful than death, I understand why. But like any great trial, God uses everything for good, if we allow Him to heal us.

Kristin Armstrong

#49. Film is the only language I speak, and I have been lucky to be involved in some great stories. You don't want to preach to people, but you want them to think about why things are the way they are, the history that is there as well as the possibilities.

Clark Johnson

#50. These are matters of external history. They are indeed prominent objects, often changing and giving a new direction to the current; but they tell us not why it flows onward and will ever flow.

Jones Very

#51. We may be of the same family, but that is the very reason why we are not friends, for we are rivals for the throne. What quarrels are worse than family quarrels?

Philippa Gregory

#52. What does this have to do with me?" It was interesting history, but she didn't know why it was relevant. "Why did the West want Windwalkers?" Lord Ophain returned her question with a question. She was beginning to see where Aldrik got his teaching style from.

Elise Kova

#53. The European history of the twentieth century shows us that societies can break, democracies can fall, ethics can collapse, and ordinary men can find themselves standing over death pits with guns in their hands. It would serve us well today to understand why. Both

Timothy Snyder

#54. We're not eight kingdoms, but an entire land with one heartbeat. It's why people like you and I need to record our people's stories so we can find those moments when our paths cross, and only then will we know true peace.

Melina Marchetta

#55. Today is a gift of God, which is why we call it the present.

Bil Keane

#56. Why should we look to the past in order to prepare for the future? Because there is nowhere else to look.

James Burke

#57. It's a common part of the narrative of the history of Christianity that it was 'real' religion that involved real spirituality and real faith, and that's why it's completely superseded the more pagan polytheistic practices.

Ann Leckie

#58. I've always really, really wanted to go to Egypt and go inside some pyramids and just hang out there. I don't know why. I don't like hot weather, and I don't like the desert, but something about the pyramid and the mummies and all their history there, I'd love to go check it out.

Jean-Luc Bilodeau

#59. It's odd that invoking the possibility of alien influences should itself be a sign of madness. I don't see the need for it to explain history on earth, but I can't see any reason why the universe shouldn't be full of life.

Graham Hancock

#60. I am not naturally inclined to history or geography - maybe that's why I like to sing about it, because it helps me remember.

Sufjan Stevens

#61. Like other Americans, U.S. journalists have often neglected the study of history; they have much remedial work to do in trying to understand who did what to whom, why and when - and who did it first.

Henry Grunwald

#62. In another chapter I have told you how in the year 800 a German chieftain had become a Roman Emperor. Now in the year 1066 the grandson of a Norse pirate was recognised as King of England. Why should we ever read fairy stories, when the truth of history is so much more interesting and entertaining?

Hendrik Willem Van Loon

#63. Why write about the past? Well, there's more of it.

John Cleese

#64. I guess high school really is ancient history, she concludes.
Ancient history? Have you really relegated us to the trash heap of the Dumb High-School Romance? And if that's the case, why the hell can't I do the same?

Gayle Forman

#65. Vitamin B proved to be not one vitamin but several, which is why we have B1, B2, and so on. To add to the confusion, Vitamin K has nothing to do with an alphabetical sequence. It was called K because its Danish discoverer, Henrik Dam, dubbed it "koagulations viatmin" for its role in blood clotting.

Bill Bryson

#66. There's a slippery slope in regard to authority. If you say that the history in Genesis is not true, then you can just take man's ideas as true. When you go outside of Scripture, why shouldn't you just reinterpret what marriage means? So our emphasis is on the slippery slope regarding authority.

Ken Ham

#67. When I was exposed to the history and the cultural background of why women whose husbands die, why they have to become ascetic or live a life that is completely deprived of emotional or social or cultural sustenance, I was really shocked.

Deepa Mehta

#68. Ialways think it's funny when Indians celebrate Thanksgiving. I mean, sure, the Indians and Pilgrims were best friends during the first Thanksgiving, but a few years later, the Pilgrims were shooting Indians.
So I'm never quite sure why we eat Turkey like everybody else. (101)

Sherman Alexie

#69. I think I now understand why it is that the young are so very nostalgic. They have so little by way of personal history that they polish it up and make it shine like a treasured heirloom.

Will Self

#70. What is history? Its beginning is that of the centuries of systematic work devoted to the solution of the enigma of death, so that death itself may eventually be overcome. That is why people write symphonies, and why they discover mathematical infinity and electromagnetic waves.

Boris Pasternak

#71. Every frame of a Coen brothers movie is filled with history and meaning, and the deeper you go, the deeper you get. That's why their movies stand up particularly well to repeated viewing and investigation.

Oscar Isaac

#72. 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

#73. I feel sorry for people of good heart who have never had a chance to learn the realities of Native American everything - not just our history but the sweetness and the beauty and the reasons why were so close to Mother Earth.

Buffy Sainte-Marie

#74. Maybe that's why I'd been chosen to become the first female Reaper in history. I think the boys had been losing too many souls.

Tish Thawer

#75. 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

#76. Being from New York, I wonder why am I inspired by bluegrass and Earl Scruggs? But when I look at the whole history of the banjo, I feel really good about it, including the Earl Scruggs part.

Bela Fleck

#77. Why are Scots so attracted to the secret world? Smiley wondered, not for the first time in his career. Ships' engineers, Colonial administrators, spies. . . . Their heretical Scottish history drew them to distant churches, he decided. "George!

John Le Carre

#78. Never again will we have this good a chance as we now have to find an enduring place for ourselves within the natural systems that keep us alive. It's a sweet spot in history. That's why this is such a critical time.

Sylvia Earle

#79. Every advancement in human history, every scientific discovery, every artistic masterpiece, every new idea has come from an individual looking at the world in a new way. Thinking outside the box. So tell me, Samantha, why are you trying so hard to put yourself inside the box?

Kate Scott

#80. When you learn from experience and history, and try to walk down a different road, the present always reminds you that you need to walk down the road that experience and history did. This is why no one learns from experience and history.

Lionel Suggs

#81. I'd known for a long time why I loved history. It was because the historians made it sound so coherent, so purposeful, so complete. They'd take an entire century and impose a meaning on it, a personality, a destiny - and this was, of course, a lie.

Anne Rice

#82. You know, the way art history is taught, often there's nothing that tells you why the painting is great. The description of a lousy painting and the description of a great painting will very much sound the same.

Chuck Close

#83. On coming out of the chapel, a well can be seen on the left. There are two in this yard. You ask, Why is there no bucket and no pulley to this one? Because no water is drawn from it now. Why is no more water drawn from it? Because it is full of skeletons.

Victor Hugo

#84. One ceases to be lonely only in recollection; perhaps that is why people read history.

John Andrew Rice

#85. Maybe it's just, I've always been to the less traveled places, in any topic, whether it's history, I always like to just choose the most obscure topic. And I don't know why I have that impulse. I can't really explain it but I've been doing that since I was a little kid.

Andrew Bird

#86. The camera has an interest in turning history into spectacle, but none in reversing the process. At best, the picture leaves a vague blur in the observer's mind; strong enough to send him into battle perhaps, but not to have him understand why he is going.

Denis Donoghue

#87. You can actually muck with history and think about what if, why not. What if there were dragons in the Incan Empire that allowed them to resist colonization? What if there were a massive dragon empire in the middle of the interior of southern Africa that decided to take objection to the slave trade?

Naomi Novik

#88. I think it's easier, I really do, because of not having that similar history, so that's why I think two-thirds of these mixed congregations are either white with Asian and Hispanic, or black with Asian and Hispanic.

Michael Emerson

#89. It seems disingenuous to ask a writer why she, or he, is writing about a violent subject when the world and history are filled with violence.

Joyce Carol Oates

#90. History tended to repeat itself.
Why should her past be any different?

Kayla Krantz

#91. Why in the midst of great events there always seems to be a family so misnamed is one of the imponderables of history.

Erik Larson

#92. Education is something which should be apart from the necessities of earning a living, not a tool therefor. It needs contemplation, fallow periods, the measured and guided study of the history of man's reiteration of the most agonizing question of all: Why?

John D. MacDonald

#93. What myth carries is not fact, not history, but truth - the ultimate reality. The Jesus story carries this ultimate reality, and that's why, two thousand years later, it remains so compelling.

Adyashanti

#94. Paternalistic is a very good word. They think they have to look out for these guys? Don't worry about it. Why? Because of history. Kevin Garnett, Tracy McGrady, LeBron James, Kobe Bryant. They did okay.

Sonny Vaccaro

#95. I always shoot at privates. It was they who did the shooting and killing, and if I could kill a wound a private, why, my chances were so much the better. I always looked upon officers as harmless personages.

Sam Watkins

#96. Life is not a race, but a journey to be savoured each step of the way. Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery and today is a gift. That's why we call it the present.

Brian Dyson

#97. Why should we honour those that die upon the field of battle? A man may show as reckless a courage in entering into the abyss of himself.

William Butler Yeats

#98. Every society in the history of man has upheld the institution of marriage as a bond between a man and a woman. Why? Because society is based on one thing: that society is based on the future of the society. And that's what? Children. Monogamous relationships.

Rick Santorum

#99. Why is it that every so often history demands a bloodbath, a holocaust, an Armageddon? And why is it that every time the time before has taught us nothing?

Graham Swift

#100. Many of our young people spend four years getting very expensive college degrees. But our universities fail them and the nation if they continue to graduate students with expertise in biochemistry, mathematics or history without teaching them to think about what problems are important and why.

Heather Wilson