Wise Words
History
“History is an art which must not neglect the known facts.”
Bernard Berenson, (1865–1959), American art historian
“People will not look forward to posterity who never look backward to their ancestors.”
Edmund Burke, (1729–1797), Irish statesman, author, orator, political theorist, & philosopher
“History is the witness that testifies to the passing of time; it illumines reality, vitalizes memory, provides guidance in daily life, and brings us tidings of antiquity.”
Marcus T. Cicero, (106 BC–43 BC), Roman philosopher, statesman, lawyer, & political theorist
“Not to know what has been transacted in former times is to be always a child. If no use is made of the labors of past ages, the world must remain always in the infancy of knowledge.”
Marcus T. Cicero, (106 BC–43 BC), Roman philosopher, statesman, lawyer, & political theorist
“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 is a lantern on the stern, which shines only on the waves behind us!”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, (1772–1834), English poet, critic, & philosopher
“Study the past if you would divine the future.”
Confucius, (551 BC–479 BC), Chinese thinker & social philosopher
“History is a vast early warning system.”
Norman Cousins, (1915–1990), American political journalist, author, & professor
“History is philosophy teaching by examples.”
Norman Cousins, (1915–1990), American political journalist, author, & professor
“A generation which ignores history has no past and no future.”
Robert Heinlein, (1907–1988), American novelist
“If the past cannot teach the present and the father cannot teach the son, then history need not have bothered to go on, and the world has wasted a great deal of time.”
Russell Hoban, American novelist
“A page of history is worth a pound of logic.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., (1841–1935), American jurist
“History knows no resting places and no plateaus.”
Henry Kissinger, German-born American political scientist & diplomat
“A nation that forgets its past can function no better than an individual with amnesia.”
David McCullough, American author, narrator, & lecturer
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
George Santayana, (1863–1952), Spanish philosopher, essayist, poet, & novelist
“History…is for time what geography is for space.”
Arthur Schopenhauer, (1788–1860), German philosopher
“We should not look back unless it is to derive useful lessons from past errors, and for the purpose of profiting by dearly bought experience.”
George Washington, (1732–1799), Continental Army leader & 1st President of the US
“Hindsight is always twenty-twenty.”
Billy Wilder, (1906–2002), Austrian-American journalist, filmmaker, screenwriter, & producer
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