The only lesson history has taught us is that man has not yet learned anything from history.

More history's made by secret handshakes than by battles, bills, and proclamations.

We need history, not to tell us what happened or to explain the past, but to make the past alive so that it can explain us and make a future possible.

History repeats itself, but in such cunning disguise that we never detect the resemblance until the damage is done.

That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach.

History is a tangled skein that one may take up at any point, and break when one has unravelled enough.

The historian must not try to know what is truth, if he values his honesty; for, if he cares for his truths, he is certain to falsify his facts.

History, n. An account mostly false, of events mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly fools.

The disadvantage of men not knowing the past is that they do not know the present. History is a hill or high point of vantage, from which alone men see the town in which they live or the age in which they are living.

A nation writes its history in the image of its ideal.