ABRAHAM LINCOLN

We cannot escape history

AUSTIN O'MALLEY

The ideal historian goes to the mouth of the tomb, cries: "Lazarus, come forth!" and sets him that was dead for ages, blinking and passionate, in the sun.

DAN SIMMONS

History viewed from the inside is always a dark, digestive mess, far different from the easily recognizable cow viewed from afar by historians.

BARACK OBAMA

Nowhere is it ordained that history moves in a straight line.

MICHAEL MARSHALL,

I don't believe ... that history repeats itself. There is no cycle. History is permanently doing the same thing. Sometimes we don't notice what's going on, that's all--and sometimes we have no choice but to see.

HENRY FORD

The only history that is worth a tinker's damn is the history we make today.

RAY MERRITT

Old men can make war, but it is children who will make history.

ALEX HALEY

History is written by the winners.

VIRGINIA WOOLF

Nothing has really happened until it has been recorded.

ANNE BRONTE

All true histories contain instruction; though, in some, the treasure may be hard to find, and when found, so trivial in quantity that the dry, shrivelled kernel scarcely compensates for the trouble of cracking the nut.

H.G. WELLS

Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.

WILLIAM HAZLITT

The history of mankind is a romance, a mask, a tragedy, constructed upon the principles of POETICAL JUSTICE; it is a noble or royal hunt, in which what is sport to the few is death to the many, and in which the spectators halloo and encourage the strong to set upon the weak, and cry havoc in the chase, though they do not share in the spoil.

JAMES JOYCE

History ... is a nightmare from which I am trying to wake.

TONI MORRISON

I'm interested in the way in which the past affects the present and I think that if we understand a good deal more about history, we automatically understand a great more about contemporary life.

ALEXANDER HERZEN

History is the autobiography of a madman.

THOMAS CARLYLE

Great men are the inspired texts of that divine Book of Revelations, whereof a chapter is completed from epoch to epoch, and by some named History.

KARL MARX

All great historical facts and personages occur, as it were, twice ... the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.

THUCYDIDES

History is philosophy teaching by examples.

SEAMUS HEANEY

It is difficult at times to repress the thought that history is about as instructive as an abattoir.

SEAMUS HEANEY

It is difficult at times to repress the thought that history is about as instructive as an abattoir.