We are not makers of history. We are made by history.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

We have the power to make this the best generation of mankind in the history of the world or to make it the last.
John F. Kennedy

Never throughout history has a man who lived a life of ease left a name worth remembering.
Theodore Roosevelt
If you want to understand today, you have to search yesterday. ~Pearl Buck
History is philosophy teaching by examples. ~Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War
People are trapped in history, and history is trapped in them. ~James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son
Until lions have their historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunters. ~African Proverb
Professor Johnston often said that if you didn't know history, you didn't know anything. You were a leaf that didn't know it was part of a tree. ~Michael Crichton, Timeline
We used to root for the Indians against the cavalry, because we didn't think it was fair in the history books that when the cavalry won it was a great victory, and when the Indians won it was a massacre. ~Dick Gregory
History is herstory, too. ~Author Unknown

The past is always a rebuke to the present.
Robert Penn Warren

History teaches everything including the future.
Lamartine

If you would understand anything, observe its beginning and its development.
Aristotle

History with its flickering lamp stumbles along the trail of the past, trying to reconstruct its scenes, to revive its echoes, and kindle with pale gleams the passion of former days. ~Winston Churchill
History is a novel for which the people is the author. ~Alfred de Vigny, Réflexions sur la Vérité dans l'Art
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
History was a trash bag of random coincidences torn open in a wind. Surely, Watt with his steam engine, Faraday with his electric motor, and Edison with his incandescent light bulb did not have it as their goal to contribute to a fuel shortage some day that would place their countries at the mercy of Arab oil. ~Joseph Heller, Good as Gold
Very few things happen at the right time, and the rest do not happen at all: the conscientious historian will correct these defects. ~Herodotus, The History of Herodotus