- “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
- “People have an annoying habit of remembering things they shouldn't.” ― Christopher Paolini, Eragon
- “History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme.” ― Mark Twain
- “We'll be remembered more for what we destroy than what we create.” ― Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters
- “History is always written by the winners. When two cultures clash, the loser is obliterated, and the winner writes the history books-books which glorify their own cause and disparage the conquered foe. As Napoleon once said, 'What is history, but a fable agreed upon?” ― Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code
- “History is a set of lies agreed upon.” ― Napoleon Bonaparte
- “History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.” ― James Joyce, Ulysses
- “Nescire autem quid antequam natus sis acciderit, id est semper esse puerum. (To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child.)” ― Marcus Tullius Cicero
- History ... is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind. - Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
- History is philosophy teaching by examples. - Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War
- I'm interested in the way in which the past affects the present and I think that if we understand a good deal more about history, we automatically understand a great more about contemporary life. - Tony Morrison, Time interview, Jan. 21, 1998