History Lessons Quotes & Sayings

I feel a deep need to listen to the remnants of history's saddest songs, to keep their mournful melody alive on my lips and in my heart. My psyche craves the lessons humanity's blood-rusted fissures have to carve into my soul, and maybe, just maybe, if I soak up enough of them, one day I will begin to make sense of today's ongoing global hostilities. — Randy Blythe

The answer to all questions of human society is in the lessons of human history, which are revealed in the Bible. — Sunday Adelaja

You have no power over your past,
but you do over your present.
You have no power over your history,
but you do over your future.
You have no power over your fortune,
but you do over your actions.
You have no power over your reputation,
but you do over your character.
You have no power over destiny,
but you do over yourself.
You have no power over anyone,
but you do over your world. — Matshona Dhliwayo

If we suppose a sufficient righteousness and intelligence in men to produce presently, from the tremendous lessons of history, an effective will for a world peace
that is to say, an effective will for a world law under a world government
for in no other fashion is a secure world peace conceivable
in what manner may we expect things to move towards this end? ... It is an educational task, and its very essence is to bring to the minds of all men everywhere, as a necessary basis for world cooperation, a new telling and interpretation, a common interpretation, of history. — H.G.Wells

Now, at this very minute, a political philosophy foreign to it is being pressed on the South, and the South's not ready for it - we're finding ourselves in the same deep waters. As sure as time, history is repeating itself, and as sure as man is man, history is the last place he'll look for his lessons. I hope to God it'll be a comparatively bloodless Reconstruction this time. — Harper Lee

The lessons of history, confirmed by the evidence immediately before me, show conclusively that continued dependence upon relief induces a spiritual and moral disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fiber.
To dole out relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit. It is inimical to the dictates of sound policy. It is in violation of the traditions of America. — Franklin D. Roosevelt

The lessons of history teach us - if the lessons of history teach us anything - that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us. — Robert A. Heinlein

I have the better right to indulgence herein, because my devotion to letters strengthens my oratorical powers, and these, such as they are, have never failed my friends in their hour of peril. Yet insignificant though these powers may seem to be, I fully realize from what source I draw all that is highest in them. Had I not persuaded myself from my youth up, thanks to the moral lessons derived from a wide reading, that nothing is to be greatly sought after in this life save glory and honour, and that in their quest all bodily pains and all dangers of death or exile should be lightly accounted, I should never have borne for the safety of you all the burnt of many a bitter encounter, or bared my breast to the daily onsets of abandoned persons. All literature, all philosophy, all history, abounds with incentives to noble action, incentives which would be buried in black darkness were the light of the written word not flashed upon them. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

But that Herschel, for example, who "broke the barriers of the heavens" - did he not once play a provincial church-organ, and give music-lessons to stumbling pianists? Each of those Shining Ones had to walk on the earth among neighbors who perhaps thought much more of his gait and his garments than of anything which was to give him a title to everlasting fame: each of them had his little local personal history sprinkled with small temptations and sordid cares, which made the retarding friction of his course towards final companionship with the immortals. — George Eliot

Below, we itemize some of the quite different lessons investors seem to have learned as of late 2009 - false lessons, we believe. To not only learn but also effectively implement investment lessons requires a disciplined, often contrary, and long-term-oriented investment approach. It requires a resolute focus on risk aversion rather than maximizing immediate returns, as well as an understanding of history, a sense of financial market cycles, and, at times, extraordinary patience. — Seth Klarman

The mistake we all make is in assuming anybody remembers anydamnthing from one day to the next. If that were true, we'd stop getting involved with approximately the same kind of wrong lover each time, we'd learn the lessons of history, the death penalty would discourage those plotting murder, and George Santayana's famous quote would be about as popular as "the bee's knees." But few of us keep accurate records of what we've learned as we hobble through life barking our shins in the dark on experiences we've already had ... — Harlan Ellison

We investigate the past not to deduce practical political lessons, but to find out what really happened. — T. F. Tout

The beauty of history is that it can be altered by changing ones perspective. If the interpretation varies so does the impact. Free will is the governor. — Truth Devour

He, who fails to acknowledge and appreciate the real courage of our fathers, fails to appreciate the real lessons that the courage of our fathers teaches us today! The courage and the wisdom that propelled our fathers to move unrelentingly in their days must be nothing to us, but, a real reason for us to be more than courageous enough to do the undone distinctively in our days. — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

History is the heritage and patrimony of mankind in its lessons of the past that give priceless inspiration for the future. — Henry Clausen

It is not my purpose here to document the destruction caused by war [...] The point is to ask ourselves why these accounts have not had greater effect. [...] Why is it that many of us are deeply moved by visual art, fiction, and firsthand accounts of destruction and yet accept war as a means of resolving conflict or defending ourselves? — Nel Noddings

Nearly everything that happened had happened before. The grand lesson of history. — Brandon Sanderson

The saying goes that history repeats itself; personal histories do the same. We can gather the lessons of others' lives through observation, conversation, and by seeking advice. We can use the automatic system to find out who the happy people are, and the reflective system to evaluate how they got to be that way. Pursuing happiness need not be a lonely endeavor. In fact, throwing in our lot with others may be a very good way of coping with the disappointments of choice. — Sheena Iyengar

The lessons of past is critical for teachings in present. And experience in the future. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Time after time mankind is driven against the rocks of the horrid reality of a fallen creation. And time after time mankind must learn the hard lessons of history-the lessons that for some dangerous and awful reason we can't seem to keep in our collective memory. — Hilaire Belloc

Life will be empty without great stories to read. — Lailah Gifty Akita

He built the Empire, yet he was also the principal in its destruction. A great man, in so many ways, but great men have great faults ... One should learn the lessons of history. The mistakes of the past need only be made once ... Unless there are no other choices. — Joe Abercrombie

Still men be clever and in an hundred centuries or more, perchance will have found a way to journey thither; when that they have discovered and understood all things on the earth. What will a man be like in the xxvii century, or even the xx? Very like unto us, I do expect; I do not think that man's nature shall change; nor do I anticipate that he will be the wiser than we, for all his learning, for 'tis a part of that nature which is ours that we do not heed the lessons of history: neither our own, nor the world's. — Chico Kidd

In this shifting landscape, we may tend to forget "what the old folks say." Most of us probably now realize that our ancestors did indeed have it right! Their common-sense ways allowed them to get through the worst of conditions throughout history and still we thrive from their bold undertakings. — Deborah L. Parker

Are we amateurs and not professionals? We know the lessons of history, we know the mistakes and we either act accordingly or collapse. Salvation lies in clarity and the courage to implement change — Thomas S. Power

Little islands of human happiness, peace, and prosperity are so exceptional at this point in history that I'm not even sure we can draw lessons from them. — P. J. O'Rourke

I think it is vitally important to study History. If we are going to lead Britain safely into the future, it is essential that we understand our country's historical roots. If we can learn the lessons of the past, we will be able to avoid making mistakes in the future. — Tony Blair

Wars become history all too soon and are forgotten all too soon as well, before the lessons can be learned. — Michael Morpurgo

Another crucial thing to question is why deniers even bother to quibble about the number of deaths. If one day it were proven only five million or 5.5 million Jews were exterminated, would it be any less an atrocity? What number would deniers suggest is low enough to say that genocide didn't occur and that it's not important that humanity remembers the Holocaust and the lessons learnt? — James Morcan

A nation that fails to plan intelligently for the development and protection of its precious waters will be condemned to wither because of its shortsightedness. The hard lessons of history are clear, written on the deserted sands and ruins of once proud civilizations. — Lyndon B. Johnson

History teaches us things about ourselves, but you have to listen for the lessons. You have to be really still to hear the whispers. — Amber Kizer

To forget is to render the pages of history as entirely blank, and the lessons of history as never taught. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

It's important to interrogate history, it's important to document history, because as a society we need constant reminders of the things that we've done in the past in the hope we can stop repeating these horrible lessons. — Matana Roberts

On the last good day he went to work for three hours and then came home and put on the History Channel. The program was about the Airstream RV. When it first came out, one one white knew what to make of the silver bullet, so the company sent a caravan of them on a promotional tour across Africa and Egypt. The native tribes came up the the RVs and poked at them with their spears. They prayed for the beasts to leave.
On the last good day, my father didn't' fall asleep while he was watching the show. He turned to me and said words that at the time were only words, not the life lessons they've since exploded into. "It just goes to show you," my father told me on the last good day, "the world's only as big as what you know. — Jodi Picoult

People are always quick to call evil what they do not know. The unknown sprouts fear. It spreads like an infection, burrowing into every facet of their lives. They need a scapegoat, someone to blame. Fingers are pointed, accusations are made, and a target lands on somebody's back. They grow angry. They turn violent.
To history, human nature must be a stubborn and tiring student. No matter how many times history tries to show it the error of its ways, it never learns from its mistakes. — Kelseyleigh Reber

You know the saying: he who doesn't understand history is doomed to repeat it. And when it's repeated, the stakes are doubled. — Pittacus Lore

Over time, it is all too common for people to lose touch with their heritage, as the thrill and immediacy of the present crowds out the echoes and lessons of the past. It would be a shame if that were to happen with respect to the fur trade. It is a seminal part of who we are as a nation, and how we came to be. — Eric Jay Dolin

If people could learn history, what lessons it might teach us! — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The Grid makes the history of architecture and all previous lessons of urbanism irrelevant. It forces Manhattan's builders to develop a new system of formal values, to invent strategies for the distinction of one block from another. The Grid's two-dimensional discipline also creates undreamt-of freedom for three-dimensional anarchy. The Grid defines a new balance between control and de-control in which the city can be at the same time ordered and fluid, a metropolis of rigid chaos. — Rem Koolhaas

I tell you, lad, that men will believe is one says, "The Gods say ... " They will believe if one says, "I had a Vision ... " They will believe if one says, "It was told me on a tablet of hidden gold ... " But, if one says, "History teaches," then they will not believe. — Sheri S. Tepper

Every time we killed a thousand Bugs at a cost of one M.I. it was a net victory for the Bugs. We were learning, expensively, just how efficient a total communism can be when used by a people actually adapted to it by evolution; the Bug commisars didn't care any more about expending soldiers than we cared about expending ammo. Perhaps we could have figured this out about the Bugs by noting the grief the Chinese Hegemony gave the Russo-Anglo-American Alliance; however the trouble with 'lessons from history' is that we usually read them best after falling flat on our chins. — Robert A. Heinlein

Southerners, whose ancestors a hundred years ago knew the horrors of a homeland devastated by war, are particularly determined that war shall never come to us again. All Americans understand the basic lessons of history: that we need to be resolute and able to protect ourselves, to prevent threats and domination by others. — Jimmy Carter

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

If you've just stared into the abyss, quickly forget it: the lessons of history can only hold you back. — Seth Klarman

Americans treat history like a cookbook. Whenever they are uncertain what to do next, they turn to history and look up the proper recipe, invariably designated the lesson of history. — Russell Baker

Protectionism is a very real danger. It is understandable that in times of a severe downturn protectionist pressures mount but the lessons of history are clear. If we give in to protectionist pressures, we will only send the world into a downward spiral. — Manmohan Singh

The answers to all the questions of the society are in the lessons of human history. — Sunday Adelaja

That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach. — Aldous Huxley

History had no lessons or rules to offer the student, it could only broaden his understanding and strengthen his critical judgment. — Carl Von Clausewitz

Science works through replication, rectification and modification. But when it comes to religion, people simply tend to accept the theoretical preachers and their claims of historical God experiences without a single question. If there has been one experience in this world in any branch of knowledge, it absolutely follows that that experience will be repeated eternally. If they are not repeated through natural processes, the thinking humanity would have no way but to disprove that such an experience ever occurred in the history. — Abhijit Naskar

The span of a man is three score and 10, or thereabouts. As most Americans are not especially keen on availing themselves of the lessons contained in 6,000 years of recorded history, we have a tendency to believe that the current status quo is pretty much how the world has been and how it will always be. — Theodore Beale

One's own history can be the greatest educator — Deborah L. Parker

Here is a lesson to brand in fire across any young historian's mind: If you try to do too much, you will not do anything. — Richard Marius

The community as a whole doesn't listen patiently to critics who adopt alternative viewpoints. Although the great lesson of history is that knowledge develops through the conflict of viewpoints. — Walter Gilbert

The very concept of history implies the scholar and the reader. Without a generation of civilized people to study history, to preserve its records, to absorb its lessons and relate them to its own problems, history, too, would lose its meaning. — George F. Kennan

Great cycles of history began with vigorous cultures awakening to the needs of children, but collapsing with frayed family ties. Have we failed to learn lessons which Ancient China, Greece and Rome learned too late - about day care and death houses for old folks? Do we without protest accept accelerating preschool and nursing home cultures which warn ominously that the earlier you institutionalize your child, the earlier he will institutionalize you! — Raymond S. Moore

What we should grasp, however, from the lessons of European history is that, first, there is nothing necessarily benevolent about programmes of European integration; second, the desire to achieve grand utopian plans often poses a grave threat to freedom; and third, European unity has been tried before, and the outcome was far from happy. — Margaret Thatcher

If men could learn from history, what lessons it might teach us. But passion and party blind our eyes, and the light which experience gives us is a lantern on the stern, which shines only on the waves behind us. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Freedom does not always win. This is one of the bitterest lessons of history. — A.J.P. Taylor

History's greatest lessons is that once the state embraces a religion, the nature of that religion changes radically. It loses its nonviolent component — Mark Kurlansky

The neglect of a generation is regeneration so every soul may become its own history, not the incessant anxiety of unnaturally imposed lessons, a plague of its own making. — Dew Platt

Everything has happened before - not once, but over and over again. We may not be able to solve our problems through what are pompously called "the lessons of history," but at least we should be able to recognize the issues and perhaps avoid some of the solutions that have failed in the past. And we can take heart in our own dilemma by realizing that other people in other times have survived worse. — Elizabeth Peters

Progress is man's indifference to the lessons of history. — Len Deighton

The Scripture was given to us to teach and to uplift. To provide a path to God. Occasionally a person fixates on a certain portion, a portion that many of us would consider narrative history
such as the book of Daniel. It is a record of Daniel's experience in exile, in the court of Babylon. We can see God's sovereignty over kings, in this case Nebuchadnezzar." Tate jingled the change in his pocket, unsure where Mitch was headed. "In addition to the historical aspects, there are spiritual lessons to be found within this portion of the Scripture
God's faithfulness to his people and his omnipotence." "But ... " "But when someone fixates on one portion versus the Scripture as a whole, confusion sets in. They pick and choose certain words and use them to justify almost any action." Tate hesitated, then asked, "Even murder?" "Especially murder. — Vannetta Chapman

If I have nothing but a room full of books, it is enough for me to survive life. — Lailah Gifty Akita

T's one of history's many valuable lessons: the foot soldiers tend to be the casualties in any conflict, not the generals. — Mark Mills

History lessons remind us that the states in which we live, their institutions, even their laws, have come to us through conflict, often of the most bloodthirsty sort. Our daily diet of news brings us reports of the shedding of blood, often in regions quite close to our homelands, in circumstances that deny our conception of cultural normality altogether. We succeed, all the same, in consigning the lessons both of history and of reportage to a special and separate category of "otherness" which invalidate our expectations of how our own world will be tomorrow and the day after not at all. Our institutions and our laws, we tell ourselves, have set the human potentiality for violence about with such restraints that violence in everyday life will be punished as criminal by our laws, while its use by our institutions of state will take the particular form of "civilised warfare. — Steven Pinker

Those who ignore history's lessons in the ultimate folly of war are forced to do more than relive them ... they may be forced to die by them. — Dan Simmons

History teaches us these lessons for the interveners: leave your prejudices at home, keep your ambitions low, have enough resources to do the job, do not lose the golden hour, make security your first priority, involve the neighbours. — Paddy Ashdown

The first great skeptic of American exceptionalism, he refused to believe that the country was exempt from the sober lessons of history. — Ron Chernow

The lessons of the past suggest that racism and resentment against people of color will continue to flourish in America as long as the history that is taught transposes the heroes and the villains. That is the unspoken truth at the heart of the nation's racial divide. — Susan L. Taylor

This was a tragic event in human history, but by paying tribute to the Armenian community we ensure the lessons of the Armenian genocide are properly understood and acknowledged. — Jerry Costello

MODERN SAUDI HISTORY IN FIVE EASY LESSONS
If you did not go hungry in the reign of King Abdul Aziz, you would never go hungry.
If you did not have fun in the reign of King Saud, you would never have fun.
If you did not go to prison in the reign of King Faisal, you would never go to prison.
If you did not make money in the reign of King Khaled, you would never make money.
If you did not go bankrupt in the reign of King Fahd ... — Robert Lacey

Nothing Happens for the First Time — Craig L. Delue

There's an arrest warrant out for her. Did you even consider taking her to the Commander?"
"No."
"Why not?" Valek didn't try to hide his disbelief. "Killing isn't the only solution to a problem. Or has that been yourformula?"
" My formula! Excuse me, Mr. Assassin, while I laugh as I remember my history lessons on how to deal with a tyrannical monarch by killing him and his family."
Valek flashed me a dangerous look. — Maria V. Snyder

It is very foolish to ignore the past. The man who does ignore it, and assumes that our problems are quite new, and that therefore the past has nothing at all to teach us, is a man who is not only grossly ignorant of the Scriptures, he is equally ignorant of some of the greatest lessons even in secular history. — D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

My point is, or should be, simple: history happened. The object is not to undo it, distort it, or to make it fit our present political attitudes. The object of history, which each generation properly interprets anew, is to understand what happened and why. A multicultural Canada can and should look at its past with fresh eyes. It should, for example, study how the Ukrainians came to Canada, how they were treated, how they lived, sometimes suffered, ultimately prospered, and became Canadians. What historians should not do is to recreate history to make it serve present purposes. They should not obscure or reshape events to make them fit political agendas. They should not declare whole areas of the past off-limits because they can only be presented in politically unfashionable terms any more than they should fail to draw object lessons from a past that was frequently less than pleasant and less than honourable. Because the past was not perfect, it must not be made perfect today. — J.L. Granatstein

The first lesson of history is that evil is good. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

History's one great lesson is that reactionaries are losers. — George Otis

History repeating itself, he thought. Lessons learned long ago so often needed to be learned all over again in the present. It might true here, and he might be the student who was being taught. — Terry Brooks

I'm a great reader of history. I love - I have been reading history since I was a kid, and learning the lessons globally of what happened with people. — Warren Mundine

War is unlike life. It's a denial of everything you learn life is. And that's why when you get finished with it, you see that if offers no lessons that can't be bettered learned in civilian life. You are exposed to horrors you would sooner forget. — Robert Graff

Every person should take a lesson from history. We should understand that wherever there have been internal fights and conflicts in the country, the country has been weakened. Due to this, the danger from outside increases. The country has to pay a big price due to this type of weakness. — Rajiv Gandhi

Today's coastal development along with hurricane amnesia places modern man on a collision course with catastrophe if the lessons of history are ignored. — Max Mayfield

The habits of a vigorous mind are formed in contending with difficulties. All history will convince you of this, and that wisdom and penetration are the fruit of experience, not the lessons of retirement and leisure. Great necessities call out great virtues. When a mind is raised and animated by scenes that engage the heart, then those qualities which would otherwise lie dormant wake into life and form the character of the hero and the statesman ... ' - Abigail Adams to her son John Quincy Adams, p. 379 — Irving Stone

History was more than just stories, he reminded himself as the men walked forward with their burdens. It taught lessons as well. — Conn Iggulden

Is the only lesson of history to be that mankind is unteachable? — Winston Churchill

If History teaches any lesson at all, it is that there are no historical lessons. — Lucien Febvre

A walk about Paris will provide lessons in history, beauty, and in the point of Life. — Thomas Jefferson

The history of the Holocaust is not over. Its precedent is eternal, and its lessons have not yet been — Timothy Snyder

The so-called lessons of history are for the most part the rationalizations of the victors. History is written by the survivors. — Max Lerner

It is necessary, for the sake of the forward march of the human race, that there should be proud lessons of courage permanently on the heights. Daring deeds dazzle history and are one of man's great sources of light. The dawn dares when it rises. To attempt, to brave, to persist, to persevere, to be faithful to one's self, to grasp fate bodily, to astound catastrophe by the small amount of fear that it occasions us, now to affront unjust power, again to insult drunken victory, to hold one's position, to stand one's ground; that is the example which nations need, that is the light which electrifies them. — Victor Hugo

As a graduate of the Citadel, the military college of South Carolina, I am astonished by Tolstoy's absolute mastery at describing battles and military tactics. If I were teaching military history in any country in the world, I would make War and Peace required reading for anyone who held any ambition for advancement into the officer corps. It should be on the night table of the leader of every country who wishes to send troops into war. No writer has ever described the horror and anarchy of battle with more authority. It is one of the timeless lessons of War and Peace that no one, not Napoleon, nor the Tsar, nor the Russian general Katuzov, has any idea how a war is going to turn out once it is unleashed. Napoleon — Leo Tolstoy

Today's life is tomorrow's career and yesterday's history, live it well. — Rajesh Walecha

This plant represents what's happening inside of you. The world, like the soil, is cold and dark - layered with a history of destruction and death. You were planted in this world to rise above it. Do you not see? The very existence of this darkness gives you the opportunity to become a light to the world. — Seth Adam Smith

History provides a sense of where we've been and lessons that can be taken forward. — Jim Leach

History is boring, unless you see it from the right perspective. perspective is important.
Corn growing in a field appears orderless, till one turns the corner and sees the rows line up. a pixelized photo is unrecognizable, till one zooms out. All the the numbers are on a combination lock but it will not open till they are in the right sequence.
So it is with history - all the names, dates and places are there, but it is not until they are seen from the right perspective that lessons become clear. history is boring, until it comes into focus. — William J. Federer

The great lesson of history for us is that strength and resolve bring peace and order, and weakness and vacillation invite chaos and conflict. — Rick Perry

One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It's simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we've been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back. — Carl Sagan

Will this generation be able to turn things around and learn a valuable lesson from all of this? I hope so, but I have my doubts. The damage has been done. And as a lifelong student of history, it's quite evident that human beings don't learn from the mistakes of past generations. — Aaron B. Powell