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
History should not be left to the historians. Rather, be like Churchill. Make history, and then write it. — Ferdinand Marcos
History is not a catalogue but...a convincing version of events. — A. J. P. Taylor
The writing of history reflects the interests, predilections, and even prejudices of a given generation. — John Hope Franklin
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
History is Philosophy teaching by example. — Thucydides
History is a vision of God's creation on the move. — Arnold J. Toynbee
History is a light that illuminates the past,
and a key that unlocks the door to the future. — Runoko Rashidi
That's history. I say history because it happened in the past. — Murray Walker
Short Writing History Quotes
History is the ship carrying living memories to the future. — Stephen Spender
History written in pencil is easily erased, but crayon is forever. — Emilie Autumn
History is the autobiography of a madman. — Alexander Herzen
Historia (Inquiry); so that the actions of of people will not fade with time. — Herodotus
The very ink with which history is written is merely fluid prejudice. — Mark Twain
History is neither written nor made without love or hate. — Theodor Mommsen
History is a symphony of echoes heard and unheard. It is a poem with events as verses. — Charles Angoff
The work of today is the history of tomorrow, and we are its makers. — Juliette Gordon Low
History is the land-mark by which we are directed into the true course of life. — Marcus Garvey
Top 10 Writing History Quotes
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
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
Sooner I'd try to change history than turn political, than try convincing others to write letters or to vote or to march or to do something they didn't already feel like doing. — Richard Bach
History is life; he who has not lived, or has lived only enough to write a doctoral dissertation, is too inexperienced with life to write good history. — Louis Moreau Gottschalk
Once I thought to write a history of the immigrants in America. Then I discovered that the immigrants were American history. — Oscar Handlin
Those in power write the history while those who suffer write the songs. — Frank Harte
History is written by the victors, but it's victims who write the memoirs. — Carol Tavris
History is in the past and tomorrow we will try and write a new page. Nobody knows what will happen in the future. — Didier Deschamps
Writing and rewriting are a constant search for what it is one is saying. — John Updike
Writing History Image Quotes
There comes a point in your life when you need to stop reading other people's book and write your own.
History Is Written Quotes
Historians from England will say I am a liar, but history is written by those who have hanged heroes. — Robert the Bruce
The Bible is God's declaratory revelation to man containing the great truths about God, about man, about history, about salvation, and about prophecy that God wanted us to know. The Bible could be trusted just as much as if God had taken the pen and written the words Himself. — John F Walvoord
The history of progress is written in the blood of men and women who have dared to espouse an unpopular cause, as, for instance, the black man's right to his body, or woman's right to her soul. — Emma Goldman
Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift. That's why we call it present.
When history is written as it ought to be written, it is the moderation and long patience of the masses at which men will wonder, not their ferocity. — C. L. R. James
History is a cyclic poem written by time upon the memories of man. — Percy Bysshe Shelley
History is said to be written by the victors. Fiction, by contrast, is largely the work of injured bystanders. — Edna O'Brien
Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing about.
History is written by the rich, and so the poor get blamed for everything. — Jeffrey Sachs
What happened yesterday is history. What happens tomorrow is a mystery. What we do today makes a difference - the precious present moment. — Nick Saban
Until the lion learns to write, every story will glorify the hunter.
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
Write hard and clear about what hurts.
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
Written History Quotes
Ancient Egypt was a Negro Civilization. The history of Black Africa will remain suspended in air and cannot be written correctly until African historians dare to connect it with the history of Egypt. — Cheikh Anta Diop
When the dust settles and the pages of history are written, it will not be the angry defenders of intolerance who have made the difference. The reward will go to those who dared to step outside the safety of their privacy in order to expose and rout the prevailing prejudices. — John Shelby Spong
History fades into fable; fact becomes clouded with doubt and controversy; the inscription molders from the tablet: the statue falls from the pedestal. Columns, arches, pyramids, what are they but heaps of sand; and their epitaphs, but characters written in the dust? — Washington Irving
Yesterday is a history; Tomorrow a mystery; Today is a gift; That's why we call it the present
If you will protest courageously, and yet with dignity and Christian love, when the history books are written in future generations, the historians will have to pause and say, "There lived a great people-a black people-who injected new meaning and dignity into the veins of civilization. — Martin Luther King, Jr.
I am convinced that when the history of international law comes to be written centuries hence, it will be divided into two periods: the first being from the earliest times to the end of the nineteenth century, and the second beginning with the Hague Conference. — Ludwig Quidde
Every drop of human blood contains a history book written in the language of our genes. — Spencer Wells
Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers.
I grew up in a family where no one had written a newspaper or magazine article about anybody in my family for a hundred years, right? — Michael Saylor
Few will have the greatness to bend history itself; but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total; of all those acts will be written the history of this generation. — Robert Kennedy
We are afraid of losing what we have, whether it's our life or our possessions and property. But this fear evaporates when we understand that our life stories and the history of the world were written by the same hand. — Paulo Coelho
The history of capitalism has been so totally re-written that many people in the rich world do not perceive the historical double standards involved in recommending free trade and free market to developing countries. — Ha-Joon Chang
Reading History Quotes
The more I read, the more I acquire, the more certain I am that I know nothing. — Voltaire
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
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
Your life is your story. Write well. Edit often.
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
Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.
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
You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. — James A. Baldwin
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
Studying History Quotes
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
A good friend knows all your stories. A best friend helped you write them.
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
Don’t let your history interfere with your destiny.
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
The study of History is the beginning of wisdom. — Jean Bodin
Financial history is the most important thing to study for anyone seeking to avoid the mistakes of the past. — Russell Napier
Rewriting History Quotes
The social disease of political correctness has entered daily life, inverting good to bad and attempting to rewrite proud histories as an imposition of white supremacy for which we all should make contrition. — Robert Agostinelli
The world is changed because you are made of ivory and gold. The curves of your lips rewrite history. — Oscar Wilde
He who controls the past controls the future. — Lao Tzu
Part of the approach envisaged in bringing about Black Consciousness has to be directed to the past, to seek to rewrite the history of the black man and to produce in it the heroes who form the core of the African background — Steven Biko
We're here to make a dent in the universe. Otherwise, why even be here? We're creating a completely new consciousness, like an artist or a poet. That’s how you have to think of this. We're rewriting the history of human thought with what we're doing. — Steve Jobs
Now, there are some who would like to rewrite history - revisionist historians is what I like to call them. — George W. Bush
That's human nature - we want to completely rewrite history so it can be comfortable. Without getting too profound, I'm pretty sure that's where the invention of the afterlife comes from. "We don't really become worm food. We go to a magical place with bunnies and rainbows." — Bobcat Goldthwait
That is what we have in revisionist historians. It starts with their own atheism, their own unbelief, and then they go back and attempt to revise and rewrite history in their own image. — D. James Kennedy
History is the torch that is meant to illuminate the past, to guard us against the repetition of our mistakes of other days. We cannot join in the rewriting of history to make it conform to our comfort and convenience. — Claude Bowers
Hillary has already gotten a record $8 million advance from Simon & Schuster for the book -- reportedly the most anyone has ever received for rewriting history. — Ann Coulter
Making History Quotes
The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well. — Ralph Waldo Emerson
To control a people you must first control what they think about themselves and how they regard their history and culture. And when your conqueror makes you ashamed of your culture and your history, he needs no prison walls and no chains to hold you. — John Henrik Clarke
Men make history and not the other way around. In periods where there is no leadership, society stands still. Progress occurs when courageous, skillful leaders seize the opportunity to change things for the better. — Harry S Truman
Men make history and not the other way around. In periods where there is no leadership, society stands still. Progress occurs when courageous, skillful leaders seize the opportunity to change things for the better. — Harry S. Truman
The word 'Italy' is a geographical expression, a description which is useful shorthand, but has none of the political significance the efforts of the revolutionary ideologues try to put on it, and which is full of dangers for the very existence of the states which make up the peninsula. — Klemens Von Metternich
If you don't recount your family history, it will be lost. Honor your own stories and tell them too. The tales may not seem very important, but they are what binds families and makes each of us who we are. — Madeleine L'Engle
A pessimist is one who makes difficulties of his opportunities and an optimist is one who makes opportunities of his difficulties. — Harry S. Truman
Roll up your sleeves, set your mind to making history, and wage such a fight for liberty that the whole world will respect our sex. — Carrie Chapman Catt
No one can compare to Ronaldinho. I remember his plays, his dribbles. I remember him winning every title at the Camp Nou. He made history at Barca, he made history with Brazil and he's still making history. — Neymar
Africa’s story has been written by others; we need to own our problems and solutions and write our story. — Paul Kagame
If someone writes a great story, people praise the author, not the pen. People don't say, 'Oh what an incredible pen...where can I get a pen like this so I can write great stories?' Well, I am just a pen in the hands of the Lord. He is the author. All praise should go to him. — Keith Green
All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town. — Leo Tolstoy
You are going to feel like hell if you never write the stuff that is tugging on the sleeves in your heart--your stories, visions, memories, songs: your truth, your version of things, in your voice. That is really all you have to offer us, and it's why you were born. — Anne Lamott
It's possible, in a poem or short story, to write about commonplace things and objects using commonplace but precise language, and to endow those things—a chair, a window curtain, a fork, a stone, a woman's earring—with immense, even startling power. — Raymond Carver
There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories. — Ursula K. Le Guin
I don't have ugly ducklings turning into swans in my stories. I have ugly ducklings turning into confident ducks. — Maeve Binchy
First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you're inspired or not. Habit will help you finish and polish your stories. Inspiration won't. Habit is persistence in practice. — Octavia Butler
There's a story everywhere. Being bored to death someplace is basically a funny proposition. What you have to watch out for is you don't write a boring story about a boring place. — Tim Cahill
Writing A Book Quotes
I like writing books. I'd rather be at home with my wife. I can write, take a break, come out, have a glass of tea, give my wife a kiss, and go back in and write some more. It's not so bad. I am really lucky. — Gene Wilder
Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book. — Marcus Tullius Cicero
If you knew when you began a book what you would say at the end, do you think that you would have the courage to write it? What is true for writing and for a love relationship is true also for life. The game is worthwhile insofar as we don't know what will be the end. — Michel Foucault
If there's a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it. — Toni Morrison
There comes a point in your life when you need to stop reading other people's books and write your own. — Albert Einstein
It's always hard to wrap up a series. The longer I spend with the characters, the more they become like friends. — Rick Riordan
In Great Britain, an author published a book in which he claimed that Jesus Christ had children. Such statements don't trigger civil unrest and bloodshed in Europe. But write similar statements about Islam in Syria and you might see bloody uprisings. — Bashar al-Assad
What a book a devil's chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering, low, and horribly cruel work of nature! — Charles Darwin
There are a couple of carp fishing books I've been reading. I'm very interested in that line of books, because I think they write very well, carp anglers, about the general environment. — Tom Felton
I am 55 years old now. It takes three years to write one book. I don't know how many books I will be able to write before I die. It is like a countdown. So with each book I am praying - please let me live until I am finished. — Haruki Murakami
Writing Life Quotes
We need to have music that contributes to the well-being of the spirit. Music that cradles people's lives and makes things a little easier. That's what I try to do, and what I want to do. You don't want to close the door on hope. — Merle Haggard
You have no responsibility to live up to what other people think you ought to accomplish. I have no responsibility to be like they expect me to be. It's their mistake, not my failing. — Richard P. Feynman
Real poetry, is to lead a beautiful life. To live poetry is better than to write it. — Matsuo Basho
I write ... in order to help ensure that the teeming millions in the New World, for whose sins Christ gave His life, do not continue to die in ignorance, but rather are brought to knowledge of God and thereby saved. — Bartolome de las Casas
Music expresses that which cannot be put into words. — Victor Hugo
I am the author of my life. Unfortunately, I am writing in pen and can’t erase my mistakes. — Bill Kaulitz
To gain your own voice you have to forget about having it heard. — Allen Ginsberg
All that we are is the result of what we have thought. The mind is everything. What we think, we become. — Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
I think that every decision I make in my life is based off of an emotion - and it definitely hurts me in some situations, and helps in some situations, like obviously writing and stuff is my favourite thing to do because I get to use all of my emotions and express them in that way. — Melanie Martinez
She would smile and show no surprise, convinced as she was, the same as I, that casual meetings are apt to be just the opposite, and that people who make dates are the same kind who need lines on their writing paper, or who always squeeze up from the bottom on a tube of toothpaste. — Julio Cortazar
The first step in liquidating a people is to erase its memory. Destroy its books, its culture, its history. Then have somebody write new books, manufacture a new culture, invent a new history. Before long that nation will begin to forget what it is and what it was... The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting. — Milan Kundera
Africans and persons of African descent must assume the primary responsibility and leadership in historical research....if we are to continue to leave practically all important historical research and writing concerning the black race to the white man, then we must be prepared to accept, uncomplainingly, the white man's point of view. — Chancellor Williams
Part of the main plan of imperialism... is that we will give you your history, we will write it for you, we will re-order the past...What's more truly frightening is the defacement, the mutilation, and ultimately the eradication of history in order to create... an order that is favorable to the United States. — Edward Said
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
The surrealist thinks he has outstripped the whole of literary history when he has written (here a word that there is no need to write) where others have written "jasmines, swans and fauns." But what he has really done has been simply to bring to light another form of rhetoric which hitherto lay hidden in the latrines. — Jose Ortega y Gasset
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
The Mathematician's Shiva is a brilliant and compelling family saga full of warmth, pathos, history, and humor, not to mention a cast of delightfully quirky characters, and a math lesson or two; all together, a winning equation! When Rojstaczer writes about mathematics, you'd think he was writing about poetry. — Jonathan Evison
When kids don't learn about their own heritage in school, they just don't care about school... But you won't see it in the history books unless we get the power to write our own history and tell our story ourselves. — Miles Davis
I truly believe that the great heroes that create the history of architecture are people who take risks and write to tell about it. — Peter Eisenman
It is humiliating to remain with our hands folded while others write history. It matters little who wins. To make a people great it is necessary to send them to battle even if you have to kick them in the pants. That is what I shall do. — Benito Mussolini
The players are writing a beautiful page of the club’s history and also of French football history. — Didier Deschamps
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
Beginning writers must appreciate the prerequisites if they hope to become writers. You pay your dues - which takes years. — Alex Haley
I feel like I'm too busy writing history to read it. — Kanye West
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
Writing for children is as easy as describing the history of the Byzantium in three words. — Mo Willems
History is simply a piece of paper covered with print: the main thing is to make history, not to write it. — Otto von Bismarck
It is humiliating to remain with our hands folded while others write history. It matters little who wins. — Benito Mussolini
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
I never set out to write a book to change women's lives, to change history. It's like, 'Who, me?' Yes, me. I did it. And I'm not that different from other women. Maybe my power and glory was that I could speak my truth as a woman and it was the truth of every woman. — Betty Friedan
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
We must learn, and we are gradually learning, how to write history with the help of archaeology. — Michael Rostovtzeff
Writing music is my one and only passion and joy. — Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
In my writing, as much as I could, I tried to find the good, and praise it. — Alex Haley
History has to live with what was here,
clutching and close to fumbling all we had -
it is so dull and gruesome how we die,
unlike writing, life never finishes. — Robert Lowell
Writing history is like drinking an ocean and pissing a cupful. — Gustave Flaubert
Each one writes history according to his convenience. — Jose Rizal
In Conclusion
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