"History must be our deliverer not only from the undue influence of other times, but from the undue influence of our own, from the tyranny of environment and the pressures of the air we breathe."

Lord Acton (Cited in Handbook to the History of Christianity
(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1977), p. 2.


"History is the sum total of the things that could have been avoided."

Konrad Adenauer (1876--1967), West German chancellor

"Time after time mankind is driven against the rocks of the horrid reality of a fallen creation. And time after time mankind must learn the hard lessons of history -- the lessons that for some dangerous and awful reason we can't seem to keep in our collective memory."

Hilaire Belloc

"The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments."

William H. Borah


"The barbarian and the creature of exclusively modern civilization both live without history."

Jakob Burckhardt


"Throughout recorded history, without exception, it has been the sole accomplishment of 
organized government to deprive their populations of liberty and of their property."

John C. Calhoun

"The Diet of Worms, Luther's appearance there on the 17th of April, 1521, may be 
considered as the greatest scene in Modern European History; the point, indeed, from
which the whole subsequent history of civilization takes its rise. [...]The world's pomp
and power sits there on this hand: on that, stands up for God's Truth, one man, the poor
miner Hans Luther's Son. [...] It is, as we say, the greatest moment in the Modern History
of Men. English Puritanism, England and its Parliaments, Americas, and vast work these two
centuries; French Revolution, Europe and its work everywhere at present: the germ of it
all lay there: had Luther in that moment done other, it had all been otherwise! The
European World was asking him: Am I to sink ever lower into falsehood, stagnant
putrescence, loathsome accursed death; or, with whatever paroxysm, to cast the falsehoods
out of me, and be cured and live?"

Thomas Carlyle, Heroes and Hero Worship

"I believe what really happens in history is this: the old man is always wrong; and the 
young people are always wrong about what is wrong with him. The practical form it takes is
this: that, while the old man may stand by some stupid custom, the young man always
attacks it with some theory that turns out to be equally stupid."

G.K. Chesterton

"The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see."

Winston Churchill

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

Winston Churchill


"Not to know what has transacted in former times is to continue always a child."

Marcus Tullius Cicero

"History is the record of an encounter between character and circumstances."

Donald Creighton, Canadian historian (1902-1979)



"Historically the belief in heaven and the belief in utopia are like compensatory buckets in a well: when one goes down the other comes up. When the classic religions decayed, communistic agitation rose in Athens (430 B.C.), and revolution began in Rome (133B.C.); when these movements failed, resurrection faiths succeeded, culminating in Christianity; when, in our eighteenth century, Christian belief weakened, communism reappeared. In this perspective the future of religion is secure."

Will Durant


"We cannot reform our forefathers."

George Eliot

"I desire no future that will break the ties of the past."

George Eliot


"History is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind."

Edward Gibbon


"When American presidents prepare for foreign wars, they lie. Surveying our history, we see a clear pattern. Since the end of the nineteenth century, if not earlier, presidents have misled the public about their motives and their intentions in going to war. The enormous losses of life, property, and liberty that Americans have sustained in wars have occurred in large part because of the public's unwarranted trust in what their leaders told them before leading them into war."

Robert Higgs

"That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons of history."
 
Aldous Huxley

"A morsel of genuine history is a thing so rare as to be always valuable."

Thomas Jefferson


"My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government."


Thomas Jefferson


"Throughout history, the attachment of even the humblest people to their freedom... has come as an unpleasant shock to condescending ideologues."

Paul Johnson,
Source: Enemies of Society, 1977

"Reason creates science; sentiments and creeds shape history."

Gustave Le Bon

"Change - above all violent change - is the essence of human history."
 
Michael Ledeen, neocon warmonger

"The truth is this, the march of Providence is so slow, and our desire so impatient; the work of progress is so immense & our means of aiding it so feeble; the life of humanity is so long & that of an individual so brief, that we often see only the ebb of the advancing wave, and are thus discouraged. It is history that teaches us to hope."

Robert E. Lee


"What passes as standard American history is really Yankee history written by New Englanders or their puppets to glorify Yankee heroes and ideals."

Dr. Grady McWhiney, Professor of History, Texas Christian University


"The essential characteristic of Western civilization that distinguishes it from the arrested and petrified civilizations of the East was and is its concern for freedom from the state. The history of the West, from the age of the Greek polis down to the present-day resistance to socialism, is essentially the history of the fight for liberty against the encroachments of the officeholders."

Ludwig Von Mises

"The worst evils which mankind has ever had to endure were inflicted by bad governments. The state can be and has often been in the course of history the main source of mischief and disaster."

Ludwig von Mises

"History has witnessed the failure of many endeavors to impose peace by war, cooperation by coercion, unanimity by slaughtering dissidents....... A lasting order cannot be established by bayonets."


Ludwig von Mises, Omnipotent Government [1944]

"History teaches us that traditions, values and freedom itself are lost incrementally in a thousand careless little steps."

William J. Moloney
"Throughout the history of the United States, war has been the primary impetus behind the 
growth and development of the central state. It has
been the lever by which presidents
and other national officials have
bolstered the power of the state in the face of
tenacious popular
resistance."

Bruce D. Porter, (1952- ) Professor of political science at Brigham Young University
Source: "War and the Rise of the State", 1994

"Every major horror of history was committed in the name of an altruistic motive. Has any 
act of selfishness ever equalled the carnage perpertrated by disciples of altruism?"

Ayn Rand

"History teaches that war begins when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap."

Ronald Reagan

"Throughout history it has been the inaction of those who could have acted, the 
indifference of those who should have known better, the
silence of the voice of justice
when it mattered most, that has made it
possible for evil to triumph."

Haile Selassie, (1892-1975) Emperor of Ethiopia

"When you lose your national memory, you risk losing what you need for understanding your own time -- and you risk losing the future as well as the past."

Thomas Sowell

"What is history but the story of how politicians have squandered the blood and treasure 
of the human race."

Thomas Sowell

"Because of the neglect of history in our educational system, most people have no idea
how many of the great American fortunes were created by people who were born and raised
in worse poverty than the average welfare-recipient today."

Thomas Sowell

"Freedom does not always win. This is one of the bitterest lessons of history."

A. J. P. Taylor

"In all history there is no war which was not hatched by the governments, the governments alone, independent of the interests of the people, to whom war is always pernicious even when successful."

Leo Tolstoy


"History is the fiction we invent to persuade ourselves that events are knowable and that life has order and direction. That's why events are always reinterpreted when values change. We need new versions of history to allow for our current prejudices."

Bill Watterson

"I am an historian, I am not a believer, but I must confess as a historian that this 
penniless preacher from Nazareth is irrevocably the very center of history. Jesus Christ
is easily the most dominant figure in all history."

H.G. Wells, British author (1866-1946)

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