"For it is a land of illusion, a place in the mind, a shimmering mirage of riches and mystery and death. These illusions have distorted its landscape and contorted its history."
Richard E. Lingenfelter
"France is delighted at this new opportunity to show the world that when one has the will one can succeed in joining peoples who have been brought close by history."
Francois Mitterrand
"Friendship is a word, the very sight of which in print makes the heart warm."
Augustine Birrell
"Given Pounds and five years, and an ordinary man can in the ordinary course, without any undue haste or putting any pressure upon his taste, surround himself with books, all in his own language, and thence forward have at least one place in the world."
Augustine Birrell
"Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever."
Napoleon Bonaparte
"God cannot alter the past, though historians can."
Samuel Butler
"Historian: an unsuccessful novelist."
H. L. Mencken
"History is a cyclic poem written by time upon the memories of man."
Percy Bysshe Shelley
"History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies."
Alexis de Tocqueville
"History is a pack of lies about events that never happened told by people who weren't there."
George Santayana
"History is a relentless master. It has no present, only the past rushing into the future. To try to hold fast is to be swept aside."
John F. Kennedy
"History is a tool used by politicians to justify their intentions."
Ted Koppel
"History is a vast early warning system."
Norman Cousins
"History is a vision of God's creation on the move."
Arnold J. Toynbee
"History is an account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools."
Ambrose Bierce
"History is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind."
Edward Gibbon
"History is more or less bunk."
Henry Ford
"History is philosophy teaching by example."
Dionysius
"History is the great dust-heap... a pageant and not a philosophy."
Augustine Birrell
"History is the sum total of things that could have been avoided."
Konrad Adenauer
"History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon."
Napoleon Bonaparte
"History never looks like history when you are living through it."
John W. Gardner
"History will be kind to me for I intend to write it."
Winston Churchill
"Honor is not the exclusive property of any political party."
Herbert Hoover
"How can you be expected to govern a country that has 246 kinds of cheese?"
Charles de Gaulle
