History quotes to inspire you

There are many valuable lessons that we can learn from studying history, whether our own or the history of somewhere, or someone, entirely different, and here are some of the most inspirational quotes curated by the Typerse review team.

“I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am also, much more than that. So are we all.” – James Baldwin

“Anybody can make history. Only a great man can write it.” – Oscar Wilde

“I believe that we must maintain pride in the knowledge that the actions we take, based on our own decisions and choices as individuals, link directly to the magnificent challenge of transforming human history.” – Daisaku Ikeda

“History is who we are and why we are the way we are.” – David McCullough

“The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.” – George Orwell

“The historic ascent of humanity, taken as a whole, may be summarized as a succession of victories of consciousness over blind forces – in nature, in society, in man himself.” – Leon Trotsky

“Optimists are usually wrong. But all the great change in history, positive change, was done by optimists.” – Thomas Friedman

“People have an annoying habit of remembering things they shouldn’t.” – Christopher Paolini

“History of the world is the biography of the great man. And I said: The great man always act like a thunder. He storms the skies, while others are waiting to be stormed.” – Thomas Carlyle

“History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.” – Martin Luther King Jr.

“After making a mistake or suffering a misfortune, the man of genius always gets back on his feet.” – Napoleon Bonaparte

“History is a people’s memory, and without a memory, man is demoted to the lower animals.” – Malcolm X

“We are not makers of history. We are made by history.” – Martin Luther King Jr.

“The past changes a little every time we retell it.” – Hilary Mantel

“Neither the life of an individual nor the history of a society can be understood without understanding both.” – C. Wright Mills

“Fear not for the future, weep not for the past.” – Percy Bysshe Shelley

“History has demonstrated that the most notable winners usually encountered heartbreaking obstacles before they triumphed. They won because they refused to become discouraged by their defeats.” – B.C. Forbes

“We don’t want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker’s damn is the history we make today.” – Henry Ford

“People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.” – James Baldwin

“The main thing is to make history, not to write it.” – Otto von Bismarck

“Never doubt that you can change history. You already have.” – Marge Piercy

“The best prophet of the future is the past.” – Lord Byron

“History does nothing; it does not possess immense riches, it does not fight battles. It is men, real, living, who do all this.” – Karl Marx

“A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history.” – Mahatma Gandhi

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