No great man lives in vain. The history of the world is but the biography of great men. Thomas Carlyle

There is properly no history, only biography. Ralph Waldo Emerson

Read no history: nothing but biography, for that is life without theory. Benjamin Disraeli

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. Henry Adams

Men use the past to prop up their prejudices. A. J. P. Taylor

History, with all her volumes vast/Hath but one page. Byron

Historians relate not so much what is done as what they would have believed. Benjamin Franklin

Social history might be defined negatively as the history of a people with the politics left out. G. M. Trevelyan

History is not what you thought. It is what you can remember. Mikhail Bakunin

People and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it. Hegel

History is all explained by geography. Robert Penn Warren

The history of mankind is the history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her. Seneca Falls Convention

History seems to us an arena of instincts and fashions, of appetite, avarice, and craving for power, of blood lust, violence, destruction, and wars, of ambitious ministers, venal generals, bombarded cities, and we too easily forget that this is only one of its many aspects. Above all we forget that we ourselves are a part of history, that we are the product of growth and are condemned to perish if we lose the capacity for further growth and change. We are ourselves history and share the responsibility for world history and our position in it. Hermann Hesse