That is the supreme value of history. The study of it is the best guarantee against repeating it.
What history teaches us is that neither nations nor governments ever learn anything from it.
Why did the Germans and Japanese keep fighting after 1943 when every rational hope of victory had disappeared?
In war, whichever side may call itself the victor, there are no winners, but all are losers.
When you are an historian, there's probably nothing that matters more than to be recognized by your colleagues in your own profession. I was lucky enough to win the Pulitzer Prize for History. I had to give a talk right after that to some young people. The most important thing to tell them, I think, is that you can't ever know that it's going to turn out that way.
The United States of America will sound as pompously in the world or in history as The Kingdom of Great Britain.
History is too much about wars; biography too much about great men.
When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. . think of it, always.
I have a long history of being told I have no rhythm, and of people saying 'I've heard chickens sing better than that'.
You become a champion as a team. I understand that. I know the history of the game.
It is as painful perhaps to be awakened from a vision as to be born.
There is no history of mankind, there are only many histories of all kinds of aspects of human life. And one of these is the history of political power. This is elevated into the history of the world.
None but blockheads copy each other.
Not all that is presented to us as history has really happened; and what really happened did not actually happen the way it is presented to us; moreover, what really happened is only a small part of all that happened. Everything in history remains uncertain, the largest events as well as the smallest occurrence.
History is never surprising after it happens.
Writing history and biography for kids calls for special skills that can only be acquired through practice and that are different from those required for an adult audience.
The most ridiculous concept ever perpetrated by Homo Sapiens is that the Lord God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of the Universes, wants the saccharine adoration of his creations, that he can be persuaded by their prayers, and becomes petulant if he does not receive this flattery. Yet this ridiculous notion, without one real shred of evidence to bolster it, has gone on to found one of the oldest, largest and least productive industries in history.
The current state of knowledge remains vague when history is not considered, just as history remains vague without substantive knowledge about the current state.
I want to go down in history.
Wherever you go in the history of America, there have been Black people making contributions, but their contributions have been obscured, lost, buried.