Historical Irrelevance Quotes

Events in the past may be roughly divided into those which probably never happened and those which do not matter. This is what makes the trade of historian so attractive.

We don't want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker's dam is the history we make today.

Once your network has lost confidence in you, you're headed for the dustbin of history.

You all remember, I suppose, that beautiful and inspired saying of Our Ford's: History is bunk.

I don't seem to be able to learn from experience or anything useful. History doesn't help me. Precedents don't inform my experience.

The Gen X thinks history is a waste of time. This is instant world where only readymade things are valued.

'The Iliad' is about a war 1,200 years ago that solved nothing and achieved nothing. Most of our wars achieve very little. But whatever agenda I have gets buried in a work this great. If you're being honest, you realize that, as an artist, you're not a policy maker.

I wouldn’t give a nickel for all the history in the world. It means nothing to me. History is more or less bunk. It's tradition. We don't want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker's damn is the history we make today.

History is more or less bunk.

There was a man and he had eight sons. Apart from that, he was nothing more than a comma on the page of History. It's sad, but that's all you can say about some people.

I'm not interested in the past, I'm interested in the future. Europe is past.

I am a machine, condemned to devour them and then, throw them, in a changed form, on the dunghill of history.

I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is. How many times must we say Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople! What does Rome know of rat and lizard? What are Olympiads and Consulates to these neighboring systems of being? Nay, what food or experience or succor have they for the Esquimaux seal-hunter, or the Kanaka in his canoe, for the fisherman, the stevedore, the porter?