Cynical Quotes About History

"Our ignorance of history makes us libel our own times. People have always been like this."
Gustave Flaubert

"History repeats itself because nobody listens."
Laurence Peter

"A language is a dialect with an army and a navy."
Unknown

"Treason doth never prosper. What's the reason? Why, when it prospers, none dare call it treason."
Sir John Harrington

"Every society honors its live conformists and its dead troublemakers."
Mignon McLaughlin

"Happy is the country that has no history."
Anonymous

"History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives."
Abba Eban

"God cannot change the past, but historians can."
Samuel Butler

"The past in the hands of historians is not what it was."
Lynn White, Jr.

"History is neither written nor made without love or hate."
Theodor Mommsen

"The very ink with which all history is written is merely fluid prejudice."
Mark Twain

"It might be a good idea if the various countries of the world would occasionally swap history books, just to see what other people are doing with the same set of facts."
Bill Vaughan

"God alone knows the future, but only an historian can alter the past."
Ambrose Bierce

"History: an account mostly false, of events unimportant, which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly fools."
Ambrose Bierce

Introductory quotations

"Central" mysticism insights

"Other" spiritual wisdom

"Central" poetry insights

"Other" poetry wisdom

Sources of mysticism quotes

Start of
Cynical Quotes About History