The difference between politics and history is that the living do not give up their secrets with the candour of the dead. —Acton

The study of history is not to make us cleverer for next time, but to make us wiser, forever. —Acton

History is the science of what only happens once. —Unknown

History is a story—only true. —Unknown

History is now strictly organised, powerfully disciplined, but it possesses only a modest educational value and even less conscious social purpose. —J.H. Plumb

Let us remember that the agriegation [graduate degree] forms not historians, which is to say researchers working on original texts, but professors of history—which is not the same thing. —Regine Pernoud

History does not furnish any solution, but it permits—and it alone permits—to pose the problems correctly. —Pernoud

There is no true knowledge without recourse to history. —Pernoud

Without the imaginative insight which goes with creative literature, history cannot be intelligibly written. —Veronica Wedgwood

There will always be a connection between the way men contemplate the past and the way in which they contemplate the present. —Buckle

Glory is vain. Have men ever deserved praise? They have been praised because they made a stir. —Frederick the Great

History is always written wrong, and so always needs to be rewritten. —Santayana

History is a costly and superfluous luxury of the understanding. —Nietzsche

History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awaken. —James Joyce

Great empires and tiny minds go ill together. —Patrick Buchanan

The happiest hours of mankind are recorded on the blank pages of history. —Carlyle