Quotes on history

"I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know no way of judging of the future but by the past."
Attributed to both Edward Gibbon (1737 - 1794) and Patrick Henry (1736 - 1799).

"Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it."
George Santayana

“We learn from history that we do not learn from history”
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

...but then again:

"We learn from history that we learn nothing from history."
George Bernard Shaw

"An account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools."
Ambose Bierce

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

"Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past."
George Orwell

"History always has a few tricks up its frayed sleeve. It's been around a long time."
Terry Pratchett

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

"We can be almost certain of being wrong about the future, if we are wrong about the past."
C. K. Chesterton

"History is the only laboratory we have in which to test the consequences of thought."
Etienne Gilson

"History is filled with the sound of silken slippers going downstairs and wooden shoes coming up."
Voltaire

"Who does not know that the first law of historical writing is the truth."
Cicero

"History" is a Greek word which means, literally, just "investigation."
Arnold Toynbee

"History is not history unless it is the truth."
Abraham Lincoln

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

"Nothing endures but change."
Heraclitus

"History, real solemn history, I cannot be interested in.

I read it a little as a duty, but it tells me nothing that does not either vex or weary me.

The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars or pestilences, in every page; the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all---it is very tiresome."
Catherine Morland [Jane Austen]. 1803. Northanger Abbey.