Quotes & Sayings About What History Teaches Us

History teaches that a race of people is best preserved where the greater number hold one common spirit in consequence of the similarity of their accustomed and indisputable principles. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Humans may crave absolute certainty; they may aspire to it; they may pretend, as partisans of certain religions do, to have attained it. But the history of science - by far the most successful claim to knowledge accessible to humans - teaches that the most we can hope for is successive improvement in our understanding, learning from our mistakes, an asymptotic approach to the Universe, but with the proviso that absolute certainty will always elude us. — Carl Sagan

If we cannot agree on what was important yesterday, what more on events that happened a hundred or three hundred years ago? The point here is that history is open ended and we cannot be sure about the past. So why study history? Because it teaches us to see the connections between events. Knowing how and why a certain event happened is helpful because in many cases people separated by time and place can sometimes be in similar situations. They can be mentally contemporaneous without knowing it. History gives us hindsight. — Ambeth R. Ocampo

History teaches us that the past is full of luck and chance and circumstance, without any one of which, life could have been radically different. — Arthur Goldberg

That's what History teaches us, I think, that life goes on, even though individuals die and whole civilizations crumble away: The simple things last; they are repeated over and over by each generation. — Philip Reeve

There's a good reason why nobody studies history, it just teaches you too much. — Noam Chomsky

Children need to see that they are part of a history and that the story of their family is a living thing. God tells it, a new story in each generation, and each must hold hands across the sea of time, joining together the ones who went before and the ones who come after. It is given from above. Little do we understand this in the beginning, but time teaches us many things we did not expect to learn. That is life. It is the same everywhere. — Michael D. O'Brien

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

history teaches by analogy, shedding light on the likely consequences of comparable situations. — Henry Kissinger

If the history of science teaches us anything, it is that what conquers our ignorance is research, not giving up and attributing our ignorance to the miraculous work of a creator. — Jerry A. Coyne

History teaches us that people who make the brave choices are heroes. We study history to know the stories of those who stood face-to-face with real villains and won. We study history so that when it's time for us to make the hard choice, we'll know that we can do it, too.
But then it hit him. History wasn't just about understanding the past. It was about understanding the future, his future. It was about having the tools to shape the future. And all he had to know was that when it came time for him to make choices, he would make the heroic choice, just as the greatest people throughout history had done. No matter what changed in the past, his future hadn't yet been written. He had to shape it, bit by bit.
- Dak — Jennifer A. Nielsen

History teaches us that self-proclaimed authority makes the most mistakes. And is the best at covering them up." The — Zygmunt Miloszewski

History teaches us that the great revolutions aren't started by people who are utterly down and out, without hope and vision. They take place when people begin to live a little better - and when they see how much yet remains to be achieved. — Hubert H. Humphrey

All too often, those of us who choose to remain childless are accused of being somehow unwomanly or unnatural or selfish, but history teaches us that there have always been women who went through life without having babies. — Elizabeth Gilbert

There are some who, for varying reasons, would appease Red China. They are blind to history's clear lesson, for history teaches with unmistakable emphasis that appeasement but begets new and bloodier war. It points to no single instance where this end has justified that means, where appeasement has led to more than a sham peace. Like blackmail, it lays the basis for new and successively greater demands until, as in blackmail, violence becomes the only other alternative. — Douglas MacArthur

History teaches us
that men and nations
only behave wisely
once they have exhausted
all other alternatives.
— Abba Eban

What history teaches us is that neither nations nor governments ever learn anything from it. — Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

When all that says 'it is good' has been debunked, what says 'I want' remains. ( ... ) The Conditioners, therefore, must come to be motivated simply by their own pleasure. ( ... ) My point is that those who stand outside all judgements of value cannot have any ground for preferring one of their own impulses to another except the emotional strength of that impulse. ( ... ) I am very doubtful myself whether the benevolent impulses, stripped of that preference and encouragement which the Tao teaches us to give them and left to their merely natural strength and frequency as psychological events, will have much influence. I am very doubtful whether history shows us one example of a man who, having stepped outside traditional morality and attained power, has used that power benevolently. — C.S. Lewis

We've already seen the attention merchant's basic modus operandi: draw attention with apparently free stuff and then resell it. but a consequence of that model is a total dependence on gaining and holding attention. This means that under competition, the race will naturally run to the bottom; attention will almost invariably gravitate to the more garish, lurid, outrageous alternative, whatever stimulus may more likely engage what cognitive scientists call our 'automatic' attention as opposed to our 'controlled' attention, the kind we direct with intent. The race to a bottomless bottom, appealing to what one might call the audience's baser instincts, poses a fundamental, continual dilemma for the attention merchant-just how far will he go to get his harvest? If the history of attention capture teaches us anything, it is that the limits are often theoretical, and when real, rarely self-imposed. — Tim Wu

History teaches that the overwhelming majority of elected officials follow movement builders outside government when it comes to the new and risky ... Once you recognize it, demand it and reward it, it will happen. — Eric Schneiderman

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

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

The Bible teaches that God is completely in control of what happens in history and yet he exercises that control in such a way that human beings are responsible for their freely chosen actions and the results of those actions. Human freedom and God's direction of historical events are therefore completely compatible. To put it most practically and vividly - if a man robs a bank, that moral evil is fully his responsibility, though it also is part of God's plan. — Timothy J. Keller

Dante is the first Christian poet, the first one whose whole system of thought is colored by a pure Christian theology. But the poem comes nearer to us than this. It is there real history of a brother man, of a tempted, purified, and at last triumphant human soul; it teaches the benign ministry of sorrow. His is the first keel that ever ventured into the silent sea of human consciousness to find a new world of poetry. He held heartbreak at bay for twenty years, and would not let himself die until he had done his task. Neither shall Longfellow. Neither shall I."
Lowell turned and started to descend. — Matthew Pearl

What experience and history teaches us is that people and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it. — Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

But history teaches us nothing new. And should I choose to look ahead, to what is yet to come, why, I see a future made most toxic, born on the day society sets the value of wealth above that of lives.' Sandalath — Steven Erikson

History teaches that the level of unemployment is not as important as whether the rate's going down. — Austan Goolsbee

The word of God is definitely above culture, in terms of what or who should have authority in our lives. However, we must remember that we are within culture, and our calling in Christ is to play our part in the redemption and transformation of individuals and cultures. I believe the recent history of the religious subculture teaches all too clearly that unless we are moving forward in seeking the genuine transformation of culture, then we are standing still and it is transforming us. — Steve Scott

The history of science teaches only too plainly the lesson that no single method is absolutely to be relied upon, that sources of error lurk where they are least expected, and that they may escape the notice of the most experienced and conscientious worker. — John William Strutt

I believe that each fight teaches you something, and a new history is written in each fight. — Juan Manuel Marquez

History is for human self-knowledge. Knowing yourself means knowing, first, what it is to be a person; secondly, knowing what it is to be the kind of person you are; and thirdly, knowing what it is to be the person you are and nobody else is. Knowing yourself means knowing what you can do; and since nobody knows what they can do until they try, the only clue to what man can do is what man has done. The value of history, then, is that it teaches us what man has done and thus what man is. — Robin G. Collingwood

history teaches us that visions come most quickly to lone obsessives. — Alex Mar

Let him, on meeting a fellow-mortal, learn at a glance to distinguish the history of the man, and the trade or profession to which he belongs. Puerile as such an exercise may seem, it sharpens the faculties of observation, and teaches one where to look and what to look for. — Arthur Conan Doyle

History teaches us, however, that when the times are ripe for change and the government refuses or is unable to change, either society starts to decay or a revolution begins. — Mikhail Gorbachev

We are doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past, and no amount of education gleaned from our propensity for self-destruction and misguided thinking ever teaches us anything. Not anything that we remember for more than a generation or two.
I think maybe we learn a few things each time that we don't forget. A few things that stick with us. It's just hard to pass those things on to those who come after us because if they didn't live through it, they don't view it the same way we do. If you don't experience something firsthand, it's a lot harder to accept. Terry Brooks, Bearers of the Black Staff, p 89 — Terry Brooks

A distinguished historian has said that one of the most valuable things about history is that it teaches us how things do not happen. — Joe Scarborough

Let me repeat what history teaches. History teaches. — Gertrude Stein

If Church history teaches us anything, it is that we cannot afford to be a vacillating Church. We minister to a people who are in great need of hearing truth, we dare not make any attempt to soft pedal that glorious truth. — Martin Luther

I truly do believe that history teaches that weakness arouses evil, and whether it be the horrific attack in France, the inspired attacks here in the United States, the instability in Turkey that led to a coup. — Mike Pence

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

History is important because it teaches us about the past. And bylearning about the past, you come to understand the present, so that you may make educated decisions about the future. — Richelle Mead

History teaches us to beware of the excitation of the liberated and the injustices that often accompany their righteous thirst for justice. — Wole Soyinka

Are the Scriptures clear (perspicuous)? That is, can a literate, faithful Christian read the Bible and understand what God is saying? The answer depends upon how high or low we set the bar for "understanding" and how much or how little we allow for differences in that understanding. For example, setting the bar low, all Christians would agree that the Bible teaches that Jesus Christ came for our salvation by dying on the Cross. Further, the belief that Jesus was both truly God and truly man is a teaching that most Christians throughout history have held, though both of those doctrines were challenged in significant ways in early Christian history. But once we go a bit more in-depth and get into such questions as how Jesus saves a person and what, exactly, one needs to do in order to be saved by Christ, we run into all manner of differences among Christian traditions. — Devin Rose

Jesus Christ is the greatest man in the history of the world. And to me, he's the greatest person in the history of mankind and the universe. We can't prove it, I can't put it in a test tube or in an astronomical formula, but by faith I believe it because the Bible teaches it. — Billy Graham

History teaches us every day; our understanding is the matter! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Experience teaches is such a lovely saying. However, when people try not to make the mistakes of what history and experience has taught, they are criticized for it. They are told that because they have not experienced it, they cannot appreciate it, and thus never know it. However, at the same time, people want you to learn from past mistakes and past experiences, in order to make a better choice for yourself. So let me ask you, which is the hypocrite? Is it history or is it today? — Lionel Suggs

What is a history teacher? He's someone who teaches mistakes. — Graham Swift

Value your freedom or you will lose it, teaches history. 'Don't bother us with politics', respond those who don't want to learn. — Richard Stallman

What history teaches us is that man does not change arbitrarily; he does not transform himself at will on hearing the voices of inspired prophets. The reason is that all change, in colliding with the inherited institutions of the past, is inevitably hard and laborious; consequently it only takes place in response to the demands of necessity. For change to be brought about it is not enough that it should be seen as desirable; it must be the product of changes within the whole network of diverse casual relationships which then determine the situation of man. — Emile Durkheim

I want to make it clear that the black race did not come to the United States culturally empty-handed. The role and importance of ethnic history is in how well it teaches a people to use their own talents, take pride in their own history and love their own memories. — John Henrik Clarke

History teaches us the mistakes we are going to make. — Jean Bodin

History is, in its essentials, the science of change. It knows and it teaches that it is impossible to find two events that are ever exactly alike, because the conditions from which they spring are never identical. — Marc Bloch

Amos Wilson teaches that, "To manipulate history is to manipulate consciousness; to manipulate consciousness is to manipulate possibilities; to manipulate possibilities is to manipulate power."[2] — Samori Camara

We should not be impressed when our leaders say firmly, "History teaches us" or "History will show that we were right."
They can oversimplify and force inexact comparisons just as much as any of us can. Even the clever and the powerful (and the two are not necessarily the same) go confidently off down the wrong paths. It is useful, too, to be reminded, as a citizen, that those in positions of authority do not always know better. — Margaret MacMillan