Karl Marx Quotes

History has neither the venerableness of antiquity, nor the freshness of the modern. It does as if it would go to the beginning ofthings, which natural history might with reason assume to do; but consider the Universal History, and then tell us,--when did burdock and plantain sprout first?

We have need of history in its entirety, not to fall back into it, but to see if we can escape from it.

Whatever can be noted historically can be found within history.

No one ever really 'learns' from history, because choices never present themselves in exactly the same way, and because you can always choose similarities and differences to fit current needs.

Even historians with knowledge of the event, and with the materials before them on which to form a judgment, see but little way into the causes and consequences of the great events in human history.

History is the present. That's why every generation writes it anew. But what most people think of as history is its end product.

A good history covers not only what was done, but the thought that went into the action. You can read the history of a country through its actions.

Our understanding of the thought of the past is liable to be the more adequate, the less the historian is convinced of the superiority of his own point of view, or the more he is prepared to admit the possibility that he may have to learn something, not merely about the thinkers of the past, but from them.

History is nothing but assisted and recorded memory. It might almost be said to be no science at all

History requires us to judge the figures of the past not by our moral standards but by those of the ages in which they lived and worked.

It's hard to understand a moment in history when you are in it.

All history must be mobilized if one would understand the present.

History is so indifferently rich, that a case for almost any conclusion from it can be made by a selection of instances.

I think I regard any history in quotes, because just like science, we're constantly revising science, we're constantly revising history.

History is a big word... History is not the sort of animal you can domesticate.

History is the open Bible: we historians are not priests to expound it infallibly: our function is to teach people to read it and to reflect upon it for themselves.

History is the queen of the humanities. It teaches wisdom and humility, and it tells us how things change through time.

An historian should yield himself to his subject, become immersed in the place and period of his choice, standing apart from it now and then for a fresh view.

History after all is the true poetry.

I thought it necessary to study history, even to study it deeply, in order to obtain a clear meaning of our immediate time.

From the very beginning, history wasn't content simply to be nostalgic fairytales; it wanted to make you think.

My opinion is that politicians should be humble in the face of history. And whenever history is a matter of debate, it should be left in the hands of historians and experts.

But every historical statement and legitimization itself moves within a certain relation to history.

History is only conjecture, and the best historians try to do it as accurately as they can. They try to accurately reassemble the facts and then put them down on paper.

So often when we historicize material, we use this big wide-angle lens.