Quotes about History
The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see. -- Winston Churchill
The deterioration of every government begins with the decay of the principles on which it was founded. -- Charles Louis de Secondat, Baron De Montesquieu
If we're ignorant of the historical sacrifices that made our liberties possible, we will be less likely to make the sacrifices again so that those liberties are preserved for future generations. And, if we're ignorant, we won't even know when government infringes on our liberties. Moreover, we'll happily cast our votes for those who'd destroy our liberties. -- Walter Williams
You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence. -- Charles Austin Beard, The Blue Press, June, 1994
On every question of construction (of the Constitution) let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed. -- Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Johnson, June 12, 1823, The Complete Jefferson, p322.
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse (generous gifts) from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, (which is) always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilization has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through this sequence. From bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance, from abundance to complacency; from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependence, from dependence back into bondage. -- Professor Alexander Tyler (1787)
Wise men say, and not without reason, that whosoever wished to foresee the future might consult the past. -- Nicolo Machiavelli, The Prince
A generation which ignores history has no past and no future. -- Robert A. Heinlein, The Notebooks of Lazarus Long
History teaches us many things; we learn very few of them. -- Will Spencer
The past is a source of knowledge, and the future is a source of hope. Love of the past implies faith in the future. -- Stephen Ambrose
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