Our only fault as humankind is that we are prone to repeating our mistakes, and these history quotes will open your eyes to stories of generations past.

Our history has a big impact on us, and understanding it can benefit us. For you to understand how and why our present world is the way it is, look to history for answers.

Having knowledge of our history allows us to understand where we are coming from, which allows us to understand our present. It not only reveals the past, but it also helps us create a better future.

An understanding of the successes and failures of the past is important if we are to grow and make progress from now on. If we do not learn from our past mistakes, we are bound to repeat them.

When you have knowledge of history, you’ll be able to make more sense of the current world. Studying past economic and cultural trends can help you predict what will happen next in today’s world. It can also allow you to understand why some rules exist in today’s world.

To open your eyes to stories of the past, below is our collection of inspirational, wise, and helpful history quotes, history sayings, and history proverbs, collected from a variety of sources over the years.

History Quotes To Get You Inspired By Legends Of The Past

1. “History is the interpretation of the significance that the past has for us.” – Johan Huizinga

2. “History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.” – Maya Angelou

3. “The lovers of romance can go elsewhere for satisfaction but where can the lovers of truth turn if not to history?” – Katharine Anthony

4. “We are not makers of history. We are made by history.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

5. “No volume of history is insignificant, even the worst chapters. Especially the worst chapters.” – Terri Guillemets

6. “History is a kind of introduction to more interesting people than we can possibly meet in our restricted lives; let us not neglect the opportunity.” – Dexter Perkins

7. “If you don’t know history, then you don’t know anything. You are a leaf that doesn’t know it is part of a tree. ” ― Michael Crichton

8. “A generation which ignores history has no past – and no future.” –  Robert A. Heinlein

9. “You don’t change the course of history by turning the faces of portraits to the wall.” – Jawaharlal Nehru

10. “If you think you have it tough, read history books.” – Bill Maher

History quotes to open your eyes to stories of the past

11. “More and more, I tend to read history. I often find it more up to date than the daily newspapers.” – Joe Murray

12. “The writing of histories – as Goethe once noted – is one way of getting rid of the weight of the past…. The writing of history liberates us from history.” – Benedetto Croce

13. “Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history.” – Abraham Lincoln

14. History is a mighty drama, enacted upon the theatre of times, with suns for lamps and eternity for a background.” – Thomas Carlyle

15. “History can bring luck: this is what we can call optimism.” – Stephane Hessel

16. “History is a symphony of echoes heard and unheard. It is a poem with events as verses.” – Charles Angoff

17. “To study history means submitting yourself to chaos, but nevertheless retaining your faith in order and meaning.” – Herman Hesse

18. “History is a relentless master. It has no present, only the past rushing into the future. To try to hold fast is to be swept aside.” – John F. Kennedy

19. “History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. History is who we are and why we are the way we are.” – David McCullough

20. “He who puts out his hand to stop the wheel of history will have his fingers crushed.” – Lech Walesa

You might also like these wise Native American quotes on community, respect, and more.

History quotes to inspire and teach

21. “History is the action and reaction of these two, nature and thought – two boys pushing each other on the curbstone of the pavement.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

22. “History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies.” –  Alexis de Tocqueville

23. “The history of the past is but one long struggle upward to equality.” – Elizabeth Cady Stanton

24. “History is the story of events, with praise or blame.” – Cotton Mather

25. “History is a cyclic poem written by time upon the memories of man.” – Percy Bysshe Shelley

26. “A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots.” – Marcus Garvey

27. “History is not a burden on the memory but an illumination of the soul.” – Lord Acton

28. “History is a relay of revolutions.” – Saul Alinsky

29. “People are trapped in history, and history is trapped in them.” – James Baldwin

30. “History is the only laboratory we have in which to test the consequences of thought.” – Etienne Gilson

History quotes that will enrich your life

31. “History never looks like history when you are living through it.” – John W. Gardner

32. “Human history, in essence, is the history of ideas.” – H. G. Wells

33. “Anybody can make history. Only a great man can write it.” – Oscar Wilde

34. “No other discipline has its portals so wide open to the general public as history.” – Johan Huizinga

35. “Fear not for the future, weep not for the past.” – Percy Bysshe Shelley

36. “Psychology keeps trying to vindicate human nature. History keeps undermining the effort.” – Mason Cooley
If you’re enjoying these quotes, make sure to check out our collection of psychology quotes that will help you understand yourself.

37. “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.” ― Mark Twain

38. “I can’t change history, I don’t want to change history. I can only change the future. I’m working on that.” – Boris Becker

39. “History is philosophy teaching by examples.” – Thucydides

40. “The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.” ― George Orwell

Inspirational quotes about history

41. “Knowledge of history frees us to be contemporary.” – Lynn White, Jr.
If you’re enjoying these quotes, you’ll love our collection of knowledge quotes for those who love learning.

42. “Neither the life of an individual nor the history of a society can be understood without understanding both.” – C. Wright Mills

43. “History does nothing; it does not possess immense riches, it does not fight battles. It is men, real, living, who do all this.” – Karl Marx

44. “The historian has been the hearth at which the soul of the country has been kept alive.” – John Morley

45. “History gets thicker as it approaches recent times.” – A.J.P. Taylor

46. “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” – George Santayana

47. “In history, a great volume is unrolled for our instruction, drawing the materials of future wisdom from the past errors and infirmities of mankind.” – Edmund Burke

48. “History gives answers only to those who know how to ask questions.” – Hajo Holborn

49. “Study history, study history. In history lies all the secrets of statecraft.” – Winston Churchill

50. “The best prophet of the future is the past.” – Lord Byron

More history quotes and sayings

51. “History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.” – Winston S. Churchill

52. “History is a people’s memory, and without a memory, man is demoted to the lower animals.” – Malcolm X

53. “And the whole world watched, and history remembered.” – Casey McQuiston

54. “The duty we owe to history is to rewrite it.” – Oscar Wilde

55. “We’ll be remembered more for what we destroy than what we create.” – Chuck Palahniuk

56. “History, like love, is so apt to surround her heroes with an atmosphere of imaginary brightness.” – James Fenimore Cooper

57. “Study the past if you would define the future.” – Confucius

58. “History, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.” – James Joyce

59. “History is a set of lies agreed upon.” – Napoleon Bonaparte

60. “When history fails to shed light on the truth, myth creates its own.”― Samantha Shannon

History quotes about the power of learning from the past

61. “God cannot alter the past, though historians can.” — Samuel Butler

62. “Difficulty is the excuse history never accepts.” — Edward R. Murrow

63. “We learn from history that we don’t learn from history!”― Desmond Tutu

64. “It takes an endless amount of history to make even a little tradition.” — Henry James

65. “I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.” — Thomas Jefferson

66. “Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.” — H. G. Wells

67. “The past actually happened but history is only what someone wrote down.” — A. Whitney Brown

68. “History is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.” — Edward Gibbon

69. “That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons of history.” — Aldous Huxley

70. “Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning.” – Albert Einstein

History Quotes to Ponder

71. “Alternate history fascinates me, as it fascinates all novelists, because ‘What if?’ is the big thing.” – Kate Atkinson

72. “The History of the past interests us only in so far as it illuminates the history of the present.” – Ernest Dimnet

73. “History is a symptom of our disease.”― Mao Tse-tung

74. “If history and science have taught us anything, it is that passion and desire are not the same as truth.” – E. O. Wilson

75. “Our history is not our destiny” – Alan Cohen

76. “History is Storytelling.”― Yaa Gyasi

77. “Life moves fast. As much as you can, learn from your history, you have to move forward.” – Eddie Vedder

78. “History is merely a list of surprises. It can only prepare us to be surprised yet again.” – Kurt Vonnegut

79. “History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce” – Karl Marx

80. “If you want a present different from the past, study the past.” – Baruch Spinoza

History Quotes About What History Is

81. “History is a pack of lies about events that never happened told by people who weren’t there.” — George Santayana

82. “History is an account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools.” — Ambrose Bierce

83. “The history of mankind is the instant between two strides taken by a traveler.” — Franz Kafka

84. “What is history? An echo of the past in the future; a reflex from the future on the past.” — Victor Hugo

85. “History is mostly guessing; the rest is prejudice.” — Will Durant

86. “History is a vast early warning system.” — Norman Cousins

87. “History is information. Memory is part of your identity.” — David Miliband

88. “History is nothing but assisted and recorded memory.” — George Santayana

89. “History is nothing if not an epic tale of missed opportunities.” — Graydon Carter

90. “Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.” — Aristotle

Did you enjoy these history quotes?

Having knowledge of our history allows us to learn from our mistakes and avoid repeating them in the future. It gives us a chance to understand where we came from so we can create a better future.

When you look at history, you’ll know where you came from, get a better understanding of society today, understand what causes change, and get inspired to take action in your life. Hopefully, the quotes above have inspired you to learn from your past.

Which of these history quotes resonated with you best? Do you have any other favorite quotes to add? Feel free to share with us in the comment section below.