History informs us of past mistakes from which we can learn without repeating them. It also inspires us and gives confidence and hope bred of victories already won. — William H. Hastie
The study of history lies at the foundation of all sound military conclusions and practice. — Alfred Thayer Mahan
History is a light that illuminates the past,
and a key that unlocks the door to the future. — Runoko Rashidi
To build up a future, you have to know the past. — Otto Frank
Study the past if you would divine the future. — Confucius
History is on every occasion the record of that which one age finds worthy of note in another. — Jacob Burckhardt
What distinguishes the historian from the collector of historical facts is generalization. — Edward Hallett Carr
History is the only laboratory we have in which to test the consequences of thought. — Etienne Gilson
History is malleable. A new cache of diaries can shed new light, and archeological evidence can challenge our popular assumptions. — Ken Burns
Short Historical Knowledge Quotes
Historia (Inquiry); so that the actions of of people will not fade with time. — Herodotus
To know the history of science is to recognize the mortality of any claim to universal truth. — Evelyn Fox Keller
I don’t know how to save the world. I don’t have the answers or The Answer. I hold no secret knowledge as to how to fix the mistakes of generations past and present. I only know that without compassion and respect for all of Earth’s inhabitants, none of us will survive—nor will we deserve to. — Leonard Peltier
Never mistake knowledge for wisdom. One helps you make a living the other helps you make a life.
With enough of us, around the world, we'll not just send a strong message opposing the privatization of knowledge - we'll make it a thing of the past. — Aaron Swartz
Learn all you can from the mistakes of others. You won't have time to make them all yourself. — Alfred Sheinwold
A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage; it does not need a regretful hankering after the past or a fettering of the free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men. — Bertrand Russell
Knowledge is having the right answer. Intelligence is asking the right questions.
Were I asked to define it, I should reply that archeology is that science which enables us to register and classify our knowledge of the sum of man's achievement in those arts and handicrafts whereby he has, in time past, signalized his passage from barbarism to civilization. — Amelia B. Edwards
This generation lacks true knowledge of how the past has trapped you with psychological lassos over Adam's apples. — Reks
Trust God's love. His perfect love. Don't fear He will discover your past. He already has. Don't fear disappointing Him in the future. He can show you the chapter in which you will. With perfect knowledge of the past and perfect vision of the future, He loves you perfectly in spite of both. — Max Lucado
Of all composers, past and present, I am the least learned. I mean that in all seriousness, and by learning I do not mean knowledge of music. — Giuseppe Verdi
Human Knowledge Quotes
Seven Deadly Sins Wealth without work Pleasure without conscience Science without humanity Knowledge without character Politics without principle Commerce without morality Worship without sacrifice. — Mahatma Gandhi
The history of the human race is a continual struggle from darkness into light. It is, therefore, to no purpose to discuss the use of knowledge; man wants to know, and when he ceases to do so, is no longer a man. — Fridtjof Nansen
I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.
From a clear knowledge of the Bhagavad-gita all the goals of human existence become fulfilled. Bhagavad-gita is the manifest quintessence of all the teachings of the Vedic scriptures. — Adi Shankara
Knowledge exists potentially in the human soul like the seed in the soil; by learning the potential becomes actual. — Al-Ghazali
My music is the spiritual expression of what I am — my faith, my knowledge, my being...When you begin to see the possibilities of music, you desire to do something really good for people, to help humanity free itself from its hangups...I want to speak to their souls. — John Coltrane
All our knowledge has its origin in our perceptions.
Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other. — Paulo Freire
Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge. — Plato
In human life, you will find players of religion until the knowledge and proficiency in religion will be cleansed from all superstitions, and will be purified and perfected by the enlightenment of real science. — Mustafa Kemal Ataturk
I believe that order is better than chaos, creation better than destruction. I prefer gentleness to violence, forgiveness to vendetta. On the whole I think knowledge is preferable to ignorance, and I am sure human sympathy is more valuable than ideology. — Leo Tolstoy
Scientific Knowledge Quotes
There is no use of simply acquiring titles or amassing wealth if one has no self-respect and scientific knowledge. — Periyar E. V. Ramasamy
Our reliance upon knowledge and scientific thinking to achieve total development is the only way to bring our nation ahead to the stage of non-oil production, a lesson learnt from nations with little or no natural resources. — Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan
A scientific discovery is also a religious discovery. There is no conflict between science and religion. Our knowledge of God is made larger with every discovery we make about the world. — Joseph Hooton Taylor, Jr.
Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens.
Some of the best scientists can't explain gravity; Neil Degrasse Tyson, Bill Nye, in the end, do they even know? — Logan Paul
An impersonal and scientific knowledge of the structure of our bodies is the surest safeguard against prurient curiosity and lascivious gloating. — Marie Carmichael Stopes
Concepts of well-being for countries, for peoples and for individuals are changing. In such a world, to argue for rules that never change would be to deny the reality found in scientific knowledge and reasoned judgment. — Mustafa Kemal Ataturk
For beautiful eye look for the good in others; for beautiful lips, speak only words of kindness; and for poise, walk with the knowledge that you are never alone.
For [Richard] Feynman, the essence of the scientific imagination was a powerful and almost painful rule. What scientists create must match reality. It must match what is already known. Scientific creativity is imagination in a straitjacket. — James Gleick
Khem was an ancient name for the land of Egypt; and both the words alchemy and chemistry are a perpetual reminder of the priority of Egypt's scientific knowledge. — Manly Hall
Distinguishing the signal from the noise requires both scientific knowledge and self-knowledge: the serenity to accept the things we cannot predict, the courage to predict the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference. — Nate Silver
I will frankly tell you that my experience in prolonged scientific investigations convinces me that a belief in God-a God who is behind and within the chaos of vanishing points of human knowledge-adds a wonderful stimulus to the man who attempts to penetrate into the regions of the unknown. — Louis Agassiz
Historical Truth Quotes
The truth is the greatest enemy of the State. — Unknown Author
To write history is as important as to make history. It is an unchanging truth that if the writer does not remain true to the maker, then it takes on a quality that will confuse humanity. — Mustafa Kemal Ataturk
Truth is treason in the empire of lies. — Ron Paul
They must find it difficult ... those who have taken authority as the truth, rather than truth as the authority. — Gerald Massey
For Africa to me... is more than a glamorous fact. It is a historical truth. No man can know where he is going unless he knows exactly where he has been and exactly how he arrived at his present place. — Maya Angelou
The book to read is not the one that thinks for you but the one which makes you think.
Truth is not to be found either in traditional capitalism or in Marxism. Each represents a partial truth. Historically, capitalism failed to discern the truth in collective enterprise and Marxism failed to see the truth in individual enterprise. — Martin Luther King, Jr.
Truth and History. 21 Men. The Boy Bandit King - He Died As He Lived. — Billy the Kid
I am guiding you to seek truth from the facts of the historical conditions of our society and to identify the problems. The correct solutions will come with the correct identification of the problems. — Zulfikar Ali Bhutto
The cross symbolizes a cosmic as well as historic truth. Love conquers the world, but its victory is not an easy one. — Reinhold Niebuhr
The historical development of the work of anthropologists seems to single out clearly a domain of knowledge that heretofore has not been treated by any other science — Franz Boas
Quite apart from any conscious program, the great cultural historians have always been historical morphologists: seekers after theforms of life, thought, custom, knowledge, art. — Johan Huizinga
A people's literature is the great textbook for real knowledge of them. The writings of the day show the quality of the people as no historical reconstruction can. — Edith Hamilton
There is no nobler profession, nor no greater calling, than to be among those unheralded many who gave and give their lives to the preservation of human knowledge, passed with commitment and care from one generation to the next. — Laurence Overmire
In these days the invention of printing, and the diffusion of knowledge, render historical calumnies a little less dangerous: truth will always prevail in the long run, but how slow its progress! — Napoleon Bonaparte
Far better to think historically, to remember the lessons of the past. Thus, far better to conceive of power as consisting in part of the knowledge of when not to use all the power you have. Far better to be one who knows that if you reserve the power not to use all your power, you will lead others far more successfully and well. — A. Bartlett Giamatti
The career of politics grants a feeling of power. The knowledge of influencing men, of participating in power over them, and above all, the feeling of holding in one's hands a nerve fiber of historically important events can elevate the professional politician above everyday routine even when he is placed in formally modest positions. — Max Weber
Historic changes and challenges. Breakthroughs in human knowledge and opportunity. And yet, for vast numbers across the globe, the daily realities have not altered. — Abdallah II
On the basis of biological, sociological, and historical knowledge, we should recognize that the individual self is subject to death or decay, but the sum total of individual achievement, for better or worse, lives on in the immortality of The Larger. — Hu Shih
The bases for historical knowledge are not empirical facts but written texts, even if these texts masquerade in the guise of wars or revolutions. — Paul De Man
There is a constant rush to judgment in Foucault. He is filled with specious generalizations, false categories, distortions, fudging, pretenses to knowledge in areas where he was ignorant. He had no ability whatsoever to distinguish among historical sources, where he makes terrible blunders. — Camille Paglia
Historical knowledge is indispensable for those who want to build a better world — Ludwig von Mises
Primitives of our own species, even today are historically shallow in their knowledge of the past. Only the poet who writes speaks his message across the millennia to other hearts. — Loren Eiseley
Genuine historical knowledge requires nobility of character, a profound understanding of human existence - not detachment and objectivity. — Friedrich Nietzsche
Theory and knowledge remain suspect, not because of inherent worthlessness, but because of their historic isolation from action. Without theoretical orientation, however, action is vulnerable to oversimplified and glib imitativeness-even mimicry-and to the use of the gimmick. — Erving Polster
After such knowledge, what forgiveness? Think now History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions Guides us by vanities. — T. S. Eliot
Real freedom comes from the mastery, through knowledge, of historic conditions and race character, which makes possible a free and intelligent use of experience for the purpose of progress. — Hamilton Wright Mabie
There is no self-knowledge but an historical one. No one knows what he himself is who does not know his fellow men, especially the most prominent one of the community, the master's master, the genius of the age. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
The supremacy of public opinion determines not only the singular role that economics occupies in the complex of thought and knowledge. It determines the whole process of human history. — Ludwig von Mises
Our knowledge of the historical worth of certain religious doctrines increases our respect for them, but does not invalidate our proposal that they should cease to be put forward as the reasons for the precepts of civilization. On the contrary! Those historical residues have helped us to view religious teachings, as it were, as neurotic relics, and we may now argue that the time has probably come, as it does in an analytic treatment, for replacing the effects of repression by the results of the rational operation of the intellect. — Sigmund Freud
Thus, in accordance with the spirit of the Historical School, knowledge of the principles of the human world falls within that world itself, and the human sciences form an independent system. — Wilhelm Dilthey
Instead of giving it [war] a rest I continued pursuing more research, talking to more people on the subject as if I was to please this aftermath of the book by knowledge that was more historical and psychological than literary and aesthetical. — Sasa Stanisic
The mere notion of photography, when we introduce it into our meditation on the genesis of historical knowledge and its true value, suggests the simple question: Could such and such a fact, as it is narrated here, have been photographed? — Paul Valery
There is no self-knowledge except historical self-knowledge. No one knows what he is if he doesn't know what his contemporaries are. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
We need to take nostalgia seriously as an energizing impulse, maybe even a form of knowledge. The effort to revalue what has been lost can motivate serious historical inquiry; it can also cast a powerful light on the present. — T. J. Jackson Lears
A saving knowledge of Christ crucified and risen is not the mere result of right reasoning about historical facts. It is the result of spiritual illumination to see those facts for what they really are: a revelation of the truth and glory of God in the face of Christ-who is the same yesterday today and forever. — John Piper
Much more than an entertaining set of exaggerated facts, fiction is a metaphoric method of describing, dramatizing and condensing historical events, personal actions, psychological states and the symbolic knowledge encoded within the collective unconscious; things, events and conditions that are otherwise too diffuse and/or complex to be completely digested or appreciated by the prevailing culture. — Tom Robbins
It is what we imagine knowledge to be:
dark, salt, clear, moving, utterly free,
drawn from the cold hard mouth
of the world, derived from the rocky breasts
forever, flowing and drawn, and since
our knowledge is historical, flowing, and flown. — Elizabeth Bishop
It is easy to see, though it scarcely needs to be pointed out, since it is involved in the fact that Reason is set aside, that faith is not a form of knowledge; for all knowledge is either a knowledge of the eternal, excluding the temporal and historical as indifferent, or it is pure historical knowledge. No knowledge can have for its object the absurdity that the eternal is the historical. — Soren Kierkegaard
Mathematics is one of the most basic -- and most ancient -- types of knowledge. Yet the details of its historical development remain obscure to all but a few specialists. — Ivor Grattan-Guinness
Rome is the city above all cities which loses most of its meaning to those who do not bring to it some historical sense, a decent knowledge of art, and a good amount of time. Rome therefore is particularly disturbing to an American. — Clare Boothe Luce
Mysticism, according to its historical and psychological definitions, is the direct intuition or experience of God; and a mystic is a person who has, to a greater or less degree, such a direct experience -- one whose religion and life are centered, not merely on an accepted belief or practice, but on that which the person regards as first hand personal knowledge. — Evelyn Underhill
History is valuable, to begin with, because it is true; and this, though not the whole of its value, is the foundation and condition of all the rest. That all knowledge, as such, is in some degree good, would appear to be at least probable; and the knowledge of every historical fact possesses this element of goodness, even if it posses no other. — Bertrand Russell
The historical order is very interesting, but accidental and capricious; if we would to understand the growth of knowledge, we cannot be satisfied with accidents, we must explain how knowledge was gradually built up. — George Sarton
However rich we may become in knowledge of the deeper causes of historical results, we forgo all understanding of history if we forget this inner continuity,--i.e., the conscious intentions of the participants in history-making and their consciously known successes. — William Ernest Hocking
Historical judgement is not a variety of knowledge, it is knowledge itself; it is the form which completely fills and exhausts the field of knowing, leaving no room for anything else. — Benedetto Croce
If we define 'thought collective' as a community of persons mutually exchanging ideas or maintaining intellectual interaction, we will find by implication that it also provides the special 'carrier' for the historical development of any field of thought, as well as for the given stock of knowledge and level of culture. This we have designated thought style. — Ludwik Fleck
If the history of England be ever written by one who has the knowledge and the courage,-and both qualities are equally requisite for the undertaking, - the world will be more astonished than when reading the Roman annals by Niebuhr. — Benjamin Disraeli
The future of nations cannot be frozen . . . cannot be foreseen. If we are going to accomplish anything in our time we must approach our problem in the knowledge that there is nothing rigid or immutable in human affairs. History is a story of growth, decay and change. If no provision, no allowance is made for change by peaceful means, it will come anyway - and with violence. — Herbert Hoover
In what light soever we regard the Bible, whether with reference to revelation, to history, or to morality, it is an invaluable and inexhaustible mine of knowledge and virtue. — John Quincy Adams
Geological facts being of an historical nature, all attempts to deduce a complete knowledge of them merely from their still, subsisting consequences, to the exclusion of unexceptionable testimony, must be deemed as absurd as that of deducing the history of ancient Rome solely from the medals or other monuments of antiquity it still exhibits, or the scattered ruins of its empire, to the exclusion of a Livy, a Sallust, or a Tacitus. — Richard Kirwan
Scientific practice is above all a story-telling practice. ... Biology is inherently historical, and its form of discourse is inherently narrative. ... Biology as a way of knowing the world is kin to Romantic literature, with its discourse about organic form and function. Biology is the fiction appropriate to objects called organisms; biology fashions the facts "discovered" about organic beings. — Donna J. Haraway
[Culture] denotes an historically transmitted pattern of meanings embodied in symbols, a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms, by means of which men communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and attitudes toward life. — Clifford Geertz
A modern theory of knowledge which takes account of the relational as distinct from the merely relative character of all historical knowledge must start with the assumption that there are spheres of thought in which it is impossible to conceive of absolute truth existing independently of the values and position of the subject and unrelated to the social context. — Karl Mannheim
In Conclusion
Which quotation resonated with you best? Did you enjoy our collection of historical knowledge quotes? Or may be you have a slogan about historical knowledge to suggest. Let us know using our contact form.
Citation
Feel free to cite and use any of the quotes in this collection of historical knowledge quotations. For popular citation styles(APA, Chicago, MLA), please use this citation page.
