Historical Insignificance Quotes

It is permissible even for a dying hero to think before he dies how men will speak of him hereafter. His fame lasts perhaps two thousand years. And what are two thousand years?... What, indeed, if you look from a mountain top down the long wastes of the ages? The very stone one kicks with one's boot will outlast Shakespeare.

Events in the past may be roughly divided into those which probably never happened and those which do not matter.

Five hundred years from now, who'll know the difference?!

The entire sweep of human history from the dark ages into the unknown future was considerably less important at the moment than the question of a certain girl and her feelings toward him.

it is not the inferiority of women that has caused their historical insignificance; it is rather their historical insignificance that has doomed them to inferiority.

[The] events by which the fate of nations is not materially changed, leave a faint impression on the page of history, and the patience of the reader would be exhausted by the repetition of the same hostilities [between Rome and Persia], undertaken without cause, prosecuted without glory, and terminated without effect.

Blest is that nation whose silent course of happiness furnishes nothing for history to say.

Most men have no purpose but to exist, Abraham; to pass quietly through history as minor characters upon a stage they cannot even see

You see, when you're middle class, you have to live with the fact that history will ignore you. You have to live with the fact that history can never champion your causes and that history will never feel sorry for you. It is the price that is paid for day-to-day comfort and silence. And because of this price, all happinesses are sterile; all sadnesses go unpitied.