Quotations About / On: HISTORY

  • 41.
    Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly found, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living.
    All history is the record of man's signal failure to thwart his destiny—the record, in other words, of the few men of destiny who, through the recognition of their symbolic rôle, made history.
    (Henry Miller (1891-1980), U.S. author. repr. In Selected Works, vol. 2 (1942). "Creative Death," sect. 1, The Wisdom of the Heart (1947).)
    More quotations from: Henry Miller, destiny, history
  • 42.
    History is more or less bunk. It's tradition. We don't want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker's damn is the history we make today.
    (Henry Ford (1863-1947), U.S. industrialist. Interview in Chicago Tribune (May 25, 1916). Ford later sued the paper for libel after an editorial had described him as an "anarchist" and "ignorant idealist"; in the course of the action the motor magnate was cross-examined for eight days during which he was forced to defend his views on history. The Tribune was found guilty and fined 6 cents. See Ford on idealism.)
    More quotations from: Henry Ford, history, today
  • 43.
    Unconditional love is a lofty ideal, but unconditional hate is a fact well documented by history.
    (Mason Cooley (b. 1927), U.S. aphorist. City Aphorisms, Third Selection, New York (1986).)
    More quotations from: Mason Cooley, hate, history, love
  • 44.
    All history and art are against us, but we still expect happiness in love.
    (Mason Cooley (b. 1927), U.S. aphorist. City Aphorisms, New York (1984).)
    More quotations from: Mason Cooley, happiness, history, love
  • 45.
    The wisdom of history, how she takes
    Each epoch by the neck and, growling, shakes
    It like a rat while she faintly mews.
    (Allen Tate (1899-1979), U.S. poet, critic. "Fragment of a Meditation.")
    More quotations from: Allen Tate, history
  • 46.
    ... all big changes in human history have been arrived at slowly and through many compromises.
    (Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962), U.S. First Lady, author, and speaker. As quoted in Eleanor and Franklin, ch. 27, by Joseph P. Lash (1971). Stated in 1925.)
    More quotations from: Eleanor Roosevelt, history
  • 47.
    It's not the sentiments of men which make history but their actions.
    (Norman Mailer (b. 1923), U.S. author. Charles Eitel, in The Deer Park, ch. 16, Putnam's (1955).)
    More quotations from: Norman Mailer, history
  • 48.
    These anyway might think it was important
    That human history should not be shortened.
    (Robert Frost (1874-1963), U.S. poet. "The Planners.")
    More quotations from: Robert Frost, history
  • 49.
    The history of the Victorian Age will never be written: we know too much about it.
    (Lytton Strachey (1880-1932), British biographer, historian. Eminent Victorians, preface (1918).)
    More quotations from: Lytton Strachey, history
  • 50.
    Natural selection, as it has operated in human history, favors not only the clever but the murderous.
    (Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941), U.S. author, columnist. "Iranscam: Oliver North and the Warrior Caste," The Worst Years of Our Lives (1991).)
    More quotations from: Barbara Ehrenreich, history

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