Quotes about History

When we look at history, we see history is made up of the heroes of their times. Yet, somehow we miss this when we put on the lens of the Scriptures.

Love of learning led to monasteries, which became the cradle of academic guilds.

We also give up on the quest for truth when we marshal all forces—in exegesis and history as well as in philosophical, moral, and practical theology—to "discover" and corroborate predetermined dogmatic stances.

Philosophy is like science and unlike history in that it seeks general truths rather than an account of particular events, either in the near or distant past.

The first is: if you can, read more than one history of an event or period that interests you. The second is: read a history not only to learn what really happened at a particular time and place in the past, but also to learn the way men act in all times and places, especially now.

A good historian must combine the talents of the storyteller and the scientist. He must know what is likely to have happened as well as what some witnesses or writers said actually did happen.

Jesus won the war, and the rest of history is simply mopping up.

History is a people's memory, and without a memory, man is demoted to the lower animals.

If Christianity is a mere invention of man, and the Bible is not from God, how can infidels explain Jesus Christ? His existence in history they cannot deny. How is it that without force or bribery, without arms or money, He has made such an immensely deep mark on the world as He certainly has?

History warns us that it is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies and to end as superstitions.

Those who are ignorant of Geology, find no difficulty in believing that the world was made as it is; and the shepherd, untutored in history, sees no reason to regard the green mounds which indicate the site of a Roman camp, as aught but part and parcel of the primeval hill-side.

History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes. { Letter to celebrated scientist Alexander von Humboldt , 6 December, 1813 }