160 Reading History Quotes

Following is our list of reading history quotations and slogans full of insightful wisdom and perspective about what is history.

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Famous Reading History Quotes

History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. History is who we are and why we are the way we are. — David McCullough

History is the story of events, with praise or blame. — Cotton Mather

History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon. — Napoleon

History is a light that illuminates the past, and a key that unlocks the door to the future. — Runoko Rashidi

History is a commentary on the various and continuing incapabilities of men. What is history? History is women following behind with the bucket. — Alan Bennett

That's history. I say history because it happened in the past. — Murray Walker

History is on every occasion the record of that which one age finds worthy of note in another. — Jacob Burckhardt

History is Philosophy teaching by example. — Thucydides

History is not a catalogue but...a convincing version of events. — A. J. P. Taylor

Historical novels are, without question, the best way of teaching history, for they offer the human stories behind the events and leave the reader with a desire to know more. — Louis L'Amour

History is the autobiography of a madman. — Alexander Herzen

Study history, study history. In history lies all the secrets of statecraft. — Winston Churchill

The study of History is the beginning of wisdom. — Jean Bodin

History is a vision of God's creation on the move. — Arnold J. Toynbee

You have to know the past to understand the present. — Carl Sagan

Short Reading History Quotes

  • History is a tragedy, not a morality tale. — I. F. Stone
  • If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten. — Rudyard Kipling
  • We cannot erase the past, but we can accept it as history. — Gary Chapman
  • History is a symphony of echoes heard and unheard. It is a poem with events as verses. — Charles Angoff
  • Study the past if you would divine the future. — Confucius
  • History is the land-mark by which we are directed into the true course of life. — Marcus Garvey
  • That is the supreme value of history. The study of it is the best guarantee against repeating it. — John Buchan
  • Man has always learned from the past. After all, you can't learn history in reverse! — Archimedes
  • History is the zoology of the human race. — Franz Grillparzer
  • I just couldn't move. History had me glued to the seat. — Claudette Colvin

Top 10 Reading History Quotes

The more I read, the more I acquire, the more certain I am that I know nothing. — Voltaire

If we could read the secret history of our enemies we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Disobedience, in the eyes of any one who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion. — Oscar Wilde

To read is to fly: it is to soar to a point of vantage which gives a view over wide terrains of history, human variety, ideas, shared experience and the fruits of many inquiries. — A.C. Grayling

You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. — James A. Baldwin

As a child, I read science fiction, but from the very beginnings of my reading for pleasure, I read a lot of non-fictional history, particularly historical biography. — Norman Spinrad

Old books exert a strange fascination for me -- their smell, their feel, their history; wondering who might have owned them, how they lived, what they felt. — Lauren Willig

H. W. Longfellow, 'If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.' — William Ury

Inside the Bible's pages lie the answers to all the problems that mankind has ever known. I hope Americans will read and study the Bible. — Ronald Reagan

You should read history and look at ostracism, persecution, martyrdom, and that kind of thing. They always happen to the best men, you know. — George Eliot

Reading history quote There comes a point in your life when you need to stop reading other people's book and write your ow
There comes a point in your life when you need to stop reading other people's book and write your own.

Black History Quotes

A wise man can play the part of a clown, but a clown can't play the part of a wise man. — Malcolm X

you must never be fearful about what you are doing when it is right. - Rosa Parks

you must never be fearful about what you are doing when it is right. — Rosa Parks

If we accept and acquiesce in the face of discrimination, we accept the responsibility ourselves. We should, therefore, protest openly everything ... that smacks of discrimination or slander. — Mary Mcleod Bethune

Reading history quote Reading is dreaming with open eyes.
Reading is dreaming with open eyes.

The world is a severe schoolmaster, for its frowns are less dangerous than its smiles and flatteries, and it is a difficult task to keep in the path of wisdom. — Phillis Wheatley

Revolution is a serious thing, the most serious thing about a revolutionarys life. When one commits oneself to the struggle, it must be for a lifetime. — Angela Davis

I felt that one had better die fighting against injustice than to die like a dog or rat in a trap. I had already determined to sell my life as dearly as possible if attacked. I felt if I could take one lyncher with me, this would even up the score a little bit. — Ida B. Wells

Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced. — James A. Baldwin

Every great dream begins with a dreamer. - Harriet Tubman

Every great dream begins with a dreamer. — Harriet Tubman

America will tolerate the taking of a human life without giving it a second thought. But don't misuse a household pet. — Dick Gregory

The United States has been called the melting pot of the world. But it seems to me that the colored man either missed getting into the pot or he got melted down. — Thurgood Marshall

What Is History Quotes

No matter what your history has been, your destiny is what you create today. What are you going to create? — Steve Maraboli

What happened yesterday is history. What happens tomorrow is a mystery. What we do today makes a difference - the precious present moment. — Nick Saban

History shows that it does not matter who is in power or what revolutionary forces take over the government, those who have not learned to do for themselves and have to depend solely on others never obtain any more rights or privileges in the end than they had in the beginning. — Carter G. Woodson

To step into tomorrow's possibilities you must let go of yesterday's realities. Be careful of your choices between what was, is and will be. It is very hard to fully step into your destiny while you are still holding on to your history. — Christine Caine

A language is not just words. It's a culture, a tradition, a unification of a community, a whole history that creates what a community is. It's all embodied in a language. — Noam Chomsky

To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. For what is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history? — Marcus Tullius Cicero

Take a stand for what's right. Raise a ruckus and make a change. You may not always be popular, but you'll be part of something larger and bigger and greater than yourself. Besides, making history is extremely cool. — Samuel L. Jackson

Psychotherapy is what God has been secretly doing for centuries by other names; that is, he searches through our personal history and heals what needs to be healed - the wounds of childhood or our own self-inflicted wounds. — Thomas Keating

You can only get really unpopular decisions through if the electorate is convinced of the value of the environment. That's what natural history programmes should be for. — David Attenborough

What is Money? will be regarded as the defining question of our time in history. — Robert Breedlove

Understanding History Quotes

The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history. — George Orwell

Now is the time to understand more, so we fear less. — Marie Curie

Contemporary architects tend to impose modernity on something. There is a certain concern for history but it’s not very deep. I understand that time has changed, we have evolved. But I don’t want to forget the beginning. A lasting architecture has to have roots. — I. M. Pei

Architects should be educated, skillful with the pencil, instructed in geometry, know much history, have followed the philosophers with attention, understand music, have some knowledge of medicine, know the opinions of the jurists, and be acquainted with astronomy and the theory of the heavens — Marcus Vitruvius Pollio

The function off the historian is neither to love the past nor to emancipate himself from the past, but to master and understand it as the key to the understanding of the present. — Edward Hallett Carr

It is impossible to understand history, international politics, the world economy, religions, philosophy, or ‘patterns of culture’ without taking geography into account. — Kenneth C. Davis

The obvious is always least understood. - Klemens Von Metternich

The obvious is always least understood. — Klemens Von Metternich

We can't understand when we're pregnant, or when our siblings are expecting, how profound it is to have a shared history with a younger generation: blood, genes, humor. It means we were actually here, on Earth, for a time - like the Egyptians with their pyramids, only with children. — Anne Lamott

In the long course of history, having people who understand your thought is much greater security than another submarine. — J. William Fulbright

To understand markets, you must first understand people; and to understand people, you must first understand history. — Russell Napier

Studying History Quotes

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

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

Ideas, cultures, and histories cannot seriously be understood or studied without their force, or more precisely their configurations of power, also being studied. — Edward Said

I lead no party; I follow no leader. I have given the best part of my life to careful study of Islam, its law and polity, its culture, its history and its literature. — Muhammad Iqbal

The study of history lies at the foundation of all sound military conclusions and practice. — Alfred Thayer Mahan

Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent. — Henry David Thoreau

The natural history of science is the study of the unknown. If you fear it you're not going to study it and you're not going to make any progress. — Michael E. DeBakey

We need to study the whole of history, not to fall back into it, but to see if we can escape from it. — Jose Ortega y Gasset

Furthermore, the study of the present surroundings is insufficient: the history of the people, the influence of the regions through which it has passed on its migrations, and the people with whom it came into contact, must be considered — Franz Boas

Financial history is the most important thing to study for anyone seeking to avoid the mistakes of the past. — Russell Napier

When I was in New York after I left the Army, I studied for two years at the American Theater Wing, studied acting, which involved dance and fencing and speech classes and history of theater, all that. — James Earl Jones

Writing History Quotes

History should not be left to the historians. Rather, be like Churchill. Make history, and then write it. — Ferdinand Marcos

The conqueror writes history, they came, they conquered and they write. You don't expect the people who came to invade us to tell the truth about us. — Miriam Makeba

History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it. - Winston Churchill

History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it. — Winston Churchill

When you write a two thousand page history of the Second World War, the deportations and the concentration camps will take up five pages, and the gas chambers perhaps 20 lines. — Jean-Marie Le Pen

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

The main thing is to make history, not to write it. — Otto von Bismarck

If I had to write down the most important people in the history of this planet, No.1 would be (abolitionist) John Brown. Why? Because he's a white man who said he would die for the cause, because they could take him, but they weren't going to take his grandchildren. That brother was beautiful. — Dick Gregory

What is history? Its beginning is that of the centuries of systematic work devoted to the solution of the enigma of death, so that death itself may eventually be overcome. That is why people write symphonies, and why they discover mathematical infinity and electromagnetic waves. — Boris Pasternak

I got expelled from high school, and then did my exams from home. I decided, through that experience, that I was going to expediate my plan and didn't go to university. Instead, I went to a community college and studied the theory and history of film with the idea that I wanted to write and direct. — Charlie Hunnam

Based on what you know about him in history books, what do you think Abraham Lincoln would be doing if he were alive today? 1) Writing his memoirs of the Civil War. 2) Advising the President. 3) Desperately clawing at the inside of his coffin. — David Letterman

Reading Stories Quotes

Don’t read success stories, you will only get a message. Read failure stories, you will get some ideas to get success. — Abdul Kalam

We take it for granted we know the whole story - We judge a book by its cover and read what we want between selected lines. — Axl Rose

No story is the same to us after a lapse of time; or rather we who read it are no longer the same interpreters. — George Eliot

I'd like to do the young cadet thing again for sure, but that's why I wanted to do this, to see if I could do it. I took the scenes out of the script and put them together and read them as one little arc, story and that seemed to work. — Scott Speedman

So take seriously the story that God has given you to live. It’s time to read your own life, because your story is the one that could set us all ablaze. — Dan B. Allender

I've read short stories that are as dense as a 19th century novel and novels that really are short stories filled with a lot of helium. — Lynn Abbey

Yet as I read the birth stories about Jesus I cannot help but conclude that though the world may be tilted toward the rich and powerful, God is tilted toward the underdog. — Philip Yancey

As the child approaches a new text he is entitled to an introduction so that when he reads, the gist of the... story can provide some guide for a fluent reading. — Marie Clay

I loved ghost stories, creaky staircases, stormy nights. If it guaranteed nightmares I read it by flashlight, after midnight. — Lisa Gardner

I will tell you something about stories . . . They aren't just entertainment. Don't be fooled. They are all we have, you see, all we have to fight off illness and death. — Leslie Marmon Silko

Reading More Quotes

The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go. — Dr. Seuss

If the truth is told, the youth can grow Then learn to survive until they gain control Nobody says you have to be gangstas, hoes Read more learn more, change the globe — Nas

A single line in the Bible has consoled me more than all the books I ever read besides. — Immanuel Kant

If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales. — Albert Einstein

Reading about nature is fine, but if a person walks in the woods and listens carefully, he can learn more than what is in books, for they speak with the voice of God. — George Washington Carver

There are a lot of good books around. People don't read any more. It's a sad state of affairs. Reading's the only thing that allows you to use your imagination. When you watch films it's someone else's vision, isn't it? — Lemmy Kilmister

Reading is the key that opens doors to many good things in life. Reading shaped my dreams, and more reading helped me make my dreams come true. — Ruth Bader Ginsburg

The great enemy of the salvation of man, in my opinion, never invented a more effective means of limiting Christianity from the world than by persuading mankind that it was improper to read the Bible at schools. — Benjamin Rush

Leave all the afternoon for exercise and recreation, which are as necessary as reading. I will rather say more necessary because health is worth more than learning. — Thomas Jefferson

Experts say that if children can't read by the end of the fifth grade, they lose self-confidence and self-esteem, making them more likely to enter the juvenile justice system. — Dirk Kempthorne

Reading Literature Quotes

Don’t just teach your children to read… Teach them to question what they read. Teach them to question everything. — George Carlin

We shouldn't teach great books; we should teach a love of reading. Knowing the contents of a few works of literature is a trivial achievement. Being inclined to go on reading is a great achievement. — B. F. Skinner

If the literature we are reading does not wake us, why then do we read it? A literary work must be an ice-axe to break the sea frozen inside us. — Franz Kafka

I owe everything I am and everything I will ever be to books. - Gary Paulsen

I owe everything I am and everything I will ever be to books. — Gary Paulsen

That's what books are for... to travel without moving an inch. - Jhumpa Lahiri

That's what books are for... to travel without moving an inch. — Jhumpa Lahiri

Beyond that, I seem to be compelled to write science fiction, rather than fantasy or mysteries or some other genre more likely to climb onto bestseller lists even though I enjoy reading a wide variety of literature, both fiction and nonfiction. — Joan D. Vinge

There is no surer foundation for a beautiful friendship than a mutual taste in literature. — P. G. Wodehouse

My writing is a combination of three elements. The first is travel: not travel like a tourist, but travel as exploration. The second is reading literature on the subject. The third is reflection. — Ryszard Kapuscinski

A short story padded. A species of composition bearing the same relation to literature that the panorama bears to art. As it is too long to be read at a sitting the impressions made by its successive parts are successively effaced, as in the pa — Ambrose Bierce

I studied English literature in the honors program, which means that you had to take courses in various centuries. You had to start with Old English, Middle English, and work your way toward the modern. I figured if I did that it would force me to read some of the things I might not read on my own. — Jeffrey Eugenides

People Writing About Reading History

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Read quotes by David McCullough

David McCullough
quotes on history

146 546
Read quotes by Cotton Mather

Cotton Mather
quotes on religion, witchcraft and witchcraft pdf

23 331
Read quotes by Napoleon

Napoleon

11 499
Read quotes by Alan Bennett

Alan Bennett
quotes on life, education and world

99 575
Read quotes by Murray Walker

Murray Walker

95 671
Read quotes by Jacob Burckhardt

Jacob Burckhardt
quotes on education, religion and world

17 145

More Reading History Quotes

I read that when we hiccup, it’s a remnant of a prehistoric impulse in fish — when your body does something or feels something, it’s a window into your deep intertwined connection to all of these other species and to the history of life. — Tim Urban

Make careful choice of the books which you read: let the holy scriptures ever have the pre-eminence, and, next to them, those solid, lively, heavenly treatises which best expound and apply the scriptures, and next, credible histories, especially of the Church... but take heed of false teachers who would corrupt your understandings. — Richard Baxter

I look for the good in people. Sometimes I get hurt for it, but it's rare and it's worth it. You may hear me say optimistic things that sound naive. I'm not naive. I've read too much history to be naive. I just think love wins out over the darker parts of human nature in the end. — Lex Fridman

Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and tortuous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we call it the word of a demon than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize humankind. — Thomas Paine

I'm not an educated man, but I've read some history. Every kingdom comes up bloody. Every castle is built on a pile of bones. When I came out here, LA was nothing. Back east I was a gangster, out here I'm god. — Mickey Cohen

Life is sacred? Who said so, God? Hey, if you read history you'll realize that God is one of the leading causes of death...has been for thousands of years. Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Jews, all taking turns killing each other because God told them it was a good idea. — George Carlin

My father... never required me to study anything, but he knew how to inspire in me a great desire for knowledge. Before learning to read, my greatest pleasure was to listen to passages from Buffon's natural history. I constantly requested him to read me the history of animals and birds. — Andre-Marie Ampere

No one can read the history of astronomy without perceiving that Copernicus, Newton, Laplace, are not new men, or a new kind of men, but that Thales, Anaximenes, Hipparchus, Empodocles, Aristorchus, Pythagorus, Oenipodes, had anticipated them. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

History is not the story of heroes entirely. It is often the story of cruelty and injustice and shortsightedness. There are monsters, there is evil, there is betrayal. That's why people should read Shakespeare and Dickens as well as history ~~ they will find the best, the worst, the height of noble attainment and the depths of depravity. — David McCullough

If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of the next. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this. — C. S. Lewis

I never feel lonely if I've got a book - they're like old friends. Even if you're not reading them over and over again, you know they are there. And they're part of your history. They sort of tell a story about your journey through life. — Emilia Fox

I love reading about history. Sometimes, I feel I was born in the wrong era. There was more creativity in the air when people were still discovering new worlds. — Sayings

Life is sacred? Who said so? God? Hey, if you read history, you realize that God is one of the leading causes of death. — George Carlin

There is much in the Bible against which every instinct of my being rebels, so much that I regret the necessity which has compelled me to read it through from beginning to end. I do not think that the knowledge which I have gained of its history and sources compensates me for the unpleasant details it has forced upon my attention. — Helen Keller

Reading a book is like re-writing it for yourself. You bring to a novel, anything you read, all your experience of the world. You bring your history and you read it in your own terms. — Angela Carter

I want to find a genie in a bottle that can grant me three wishes. I want to be able to speak, read, write, and understand any language ever written or spoken, just any language throughout the history of man. That would be one of my wishes from the genie, so I would have to put "multilingual" on the resume, should I ever find the genie. — Maynard James Keenan

You read about me in history books, but now I am dedicated to spreading the truth about preserving the dignity of all human life from natural conception to natural death. — Norma McCorvey

Perhaps some day men will raise a tablet reading in letters of gold: 'All honor to women, the first disenfranchised class in history who, unaided by any political party, won enfranchisement by its own effort ... and achieved the victory without the shedding of a drop of human blood. All honor to women of the world! — Harriot Eaton Stanton Blatch

I feel like I'm too busy writing history to read it. — Kanye West

You who have read the history of nations, from Moses down to our last election, where have you ever seen one class looking after the interests of another? — Elizabeth Cady Stanton

As one reads history ... one is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed, but by the punishments that the good have inflicted. — Oscar Wilde

The most important things to remember about back story are that (a) everyone has a history and (b) most of it isn’t very interesting. — Stephen King

A thoughtful mind, when it sees a Nation's flag, sees not the flag only, but the Nation itself; and whatever may be its symbols, its insignia, he reads chiefly in the flag the Government, the principles, the truths, the history which belongs to the Nation that sets it forth. — Henry Ward Beecher

I want to become a student. I want to read Chinese history and go on a dig. — Lou Gerstner

History is opaque. You see what comes out, not the script that produces events, [...] The generator of historical events is different from the events themselves, much as the minds of the gods cannot be read just by witnessing their deeds. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

I am re-reading Henry James as a change from history. I began with Daisy Miller, and I've just finished Washington Square. What a brilliant, painful book. — Antonia Fraser

I love doing normal things - movies, shopping, going out with friends, writing, reading, taking hot bubble baths - that's a big one for relaxation. I also love to go to art and history museums. — Christina Aguilera

My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government. — Thomas Jefferson

When I'm not writing or tweaking my computer, I do embroidery. When I'm not plunging into the past, tweaking, or embroidering, I'm reading books about history, computers, or embroidery. — Lynn Abbey

Cooking and gardening involve so many disciplines: math, chemistry, reading, history. — David Chang

A good history covers not only what was done, but the thought that went into the action. You can read the history of a country through its actions. — Benjamin Hooks

A broader reading of history shows that appeasement, no matter how it is labeled, never fulfills the hopes of the appeasers. — Ronald Reagan

If we could read the secret history of our enemies. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I was reading a book... 'the history of glue' - I couldn't put it down. — Tim Vine

...scientific power is like inherited wealth: attained without discipline. You read what others have done, and you take the next step. You can do it very young...there is no mastery, old scientists are ignored. There is no humility before nature...Its a form of inherited wealth. And you know what assholes congenitally rich people are. — Michael Crichton

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