A series of quotes to prompt class discussion. The first 6 take a negative view of the study of history, and the last 6 take a positive view. I used it with my Year 11 History class to get them to discuss what history is and why it is important.

1. History

2. History
Why bother?

4. History is the lie
commonly agreed
upon.
(Voltaire)

6. History is only a
confused heap of facts.
(G.K. Chesterton)

8. If a man could say nothing
against a character but what
he can prove, history could
not be written.
(Samuel Johnson)

10. The past is useless.
That explains why it
is past.
(Wright Morris)

12. History is an argument
without end.
(Peter Geyl)

14. What experience and history
teach is this‐that people and
governments never have learned
anything from history, or acted
on principles deduced from it.
(G. W. F. Hegel)

16. History is a people's
memory, and without
memory man is demoted to
the lower animals.
(Malcolm X)

18. History is the witness that testifies
to the passing of time; it illuminates
reality, vitalizes memory, provides
guidance in daily life, and brings us
tidings of antiquity.
(Cicero)

20. The function of the historian is
neither to love the past nor to
emancipate himself from the past,
but to master and understand it as
the key to the understanding of the
present.
(E. H. Carr)

22. The study of history is the best medicine for a sick mind;
for in history you have a record of the infinite variety of
human experience plainly set out for all to see; and in that
record you can find yourself and your country both
examples and warnings; fine things to take as models,
base things rotten through and through, to avoid.
(Livy)

24. Those who cannot
remember the past are
condemned to repeat it.
(Santayana)

26. A nation which does not know
what it was yesterday, does
not know what it is today, nor
what it is trying to do.
(Woodrow Wilson)

28. If you do not like the past,
change it.
(William L. Burton)