Historical Memory Quotes

Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it.

Men do not learn much from the lessons of history and that is the most important of all the lessons of history.

Society is a partnership not only by those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.

One duty we owe to history is to rewrite it.

Posterity will talk of Washington as the founder of a great empire, when my name shall be lost in the vortex of revolution.

Legends die hard. They survive as truth rarely does.

There must be people who remember World War II and the Holocaust who can help us get out of this rut.

The communist experiment should never be forgotten otherwise it may be repeated.

Modern history is like a deaf person who is in the habit of answering questions that no one has put to them.

An army took on the Union; an army lost. That nation, the Confederate States, lost. And if - that flag - in terms of publicly or state-sponsored things, or local or county or city-sponsored things - should be forever wiped from the memory, because that side lost.

Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

A nation that forgets its past can function no better than an individual with amnesia.

History is nothing but gossip about the past, with the hope that it might be true.

In my world, history comes down to language and art. No one cares much about what battles were fought, who won them and who lost them - unless there is a painting, a play, a song or a poem that speaks of the event.

The best prophet of the future is the past.

Those who cannot condemn the past repeat it in order to remember it.

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.

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.

Millions of ordinary Americans may suffer from a toxic combination of ignorance and amnesia, but the victims of U.S. coups, invasions, and bombing campaigns across the globe tend not to. Ask the Iraqis or the Iranians, ask the Cubans or the Chileans. And, yes, ask the North Koreans.

Any nation that forgets its past cannot have a future.

Germans have an understanding of history and cannot allow themselves to forget it. It may be a curse, but in some ways, it's a blessing. It makes them cautious.

The declassified documents are providing a verdict of history where a legal verdict is no longer possible.

Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it.

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

I have tried to keep memory alive... I have tried to fight those who would forget. Because if we forget, we are guilty, we are accomplices.