Voltaire History Quotes & Sayings

The closest that either Voltaire or the other historical geniuses of the age -- Hume and Gibbon -- came to understanding unreason's creative potentialities was in their Ironic criticism of themselves and in their own efforts to make sense out of history. This, at least, led them to view themselves as being as potentially flawed as the cripples they conceived to be acting out the spectacle of history. — Hayden White

French philosopher whom professional philosophers generally accord highest honors is Descartes. Montaigne and Pascal, Voltaire and Rousseau, Bergson and Sartre do not enjoy their greatest vogue among philosophers, and of these only Rousseau has had any considerable influence on the history of philosophy (through Kant and Hegel). — Friedrich Nietzsche

History is nothing but a pack of tricks that we play upon the dead. — Voltaire

Indeed, history is nothing more than a tableau of crimes and misfortunes. — Voltaire

But he had expressed to Mme. du Chatelet the hope that a way out might lie in applying philosophy to history, and endeavoring to trace, beneath the flux of political events, the history of the human mind. 'Only philosophers should write history,' he said. 'In all nations, history is disfigured by fable, till at last philosophy comes to enlighten man; and when it does finally arrive in the midst of darkness, it finds the human mind so blinded centuries of error, that it can hardly undeceive it; it finds ceremonies, facts and monuments, heaped up to prove lies.' 'History,' he concludes, 'is after all nothing but a pack of tricks which we play upon the dead;' we transform the past to suit our wishes for the future, and in the upshot 'history proves that anything can be proved by history. — Will Durant

History is a collection of agreed upon lies. — Voltaire

History never repeats itself. Man always does. — Voltaire

History is the lie commonly agreed upon. — Voltaire

History is a pack of lies we play on the dead. — Voltaire

The so-called intellectual consumes himself in what he considers pathbreaking work and in the end has only succeeded in making himself ridiculous, whether he's called Schopenhauer or Nietzsche, it doesn't matter, even if he was Kleist or Voltaire we still see a pitiful being who has misused his head and finally driven himself into nonsense. Who's been rolled over and passed over by history. We've locked up the great thinkers in our bookcases, from which they keep staring at us, sentenced to eternal ridicule, he said, I — Thomas Bernhard

History should be written as philosophy. — Voltaire

The age-long history of thinking on gravitation, too, was erased from the collective consciousness, and that force somehow became the serendipitous child of Newton's genius. The new attitude is well illustrated by the anecdote of the apple, a legend spread by Voltaire, one of the most active and vehement erasers of the past ... The need to build the myth of an ex nihilo creation of modern science gave rise to much impassioned rhetoric. — Lucio Russo

History contains little beyond a list of people who have accommodate themselves with other people's property. — Voltaire

History is only the register of crimes and misfortunes. — Voltaire

History is filled with the sound of silken slippers going downstairs and wooden shoes coming up. — Voltaire

He was not the greatest of men but he was the greatest of kings. — Voltaire

History is only the pattern of silken slippers descending the stairs to the thunder of hobnailed boots climbing upward from below. — Voltaire

History in general is a collection of crimes, follies, and misfortunes among which we have now and then met with a few virtues, and some happy times. — Voltaire

History consists of a series of accumulated imaginative inventions. — Voltaire

History never repeats itself," said Voltaire; "man always does." Thucydides, — Barbara W. Tuchman

History is the recital of facts represented as true. Fable, on the other hand, is the recital of facts represented as fiction. — Voltaire

All our ancient history, as one of our wits remarked, is no more than accepted fiction. — Voltaire

History is fables agreed upon. — Voltaire

A torch lighted in the forests of America set all Europe in conflagration. — Voltaire

What would constitute useful history? That which should teach us our duties and our rights, without appearing to teach them. — Voltaire

History is the study of the world's crime — Voltaire

Acts themselves alone are history, and these are neither the exclusive property of Hume, Gibbon nor Voltaire, Echard, Rapin, Plutarch, nor Herodotus. Tell me the Acts, O historian, and leave me to reason upon them as I please; away with your reasoning and your rubbish. All that is not action is not worth reading. — William Blake

What is history? The lie that everyone agrees on ... — Voltaire

The history of human opinion is scarcely anything more than the history of human errors. — Voltaire

There is the history of opinions which is hardly anything but a collection of human errors. — Voltaire