History is merely a list of surprises. It can only prepare us to be surprised yet again.

––Kurt Vonegut

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 a set of lies agreed upon.

––Napoleon Bonaparte

History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.

–––Winston Churchill

Men make history and not the other way around. In periods where there is no leadership, society stands still. Progress occurs when courageous, skillful leaders seize the opportunity to change things for the better.

 ––Harry S. Truman

Not to know the events which happened before one was born is to remain always a boy.

––Cicero

We Americans are the best informed people on earth as to the events of the last 24 hours; we are not the best informed as to the events of the last sixty centuries.

––Will and Ariel Durant

History is the only laboratory we have in which to test the consequences of thought.

––Etienne Gilson

Patriotism ruins history.

––Goethe

Life can be found only in the present moment. The past is gone, the future is not yet here, and if we do not go back to ourselves in the present moment, we cannot be in touch with life.

––Thich Nhat Hanh

                                                                                                                     

History repeats itself. That’s one of the things wrong with history.

––Clarence Darrow

History is a damn dim candle over a damn dark abyss.

––W.S. Holt

The very ink with which all history is written is merely fluid prejudice.

––Mark Twain

Life must be lived forward, but understood backward.

––Soren Kierkegaard

What is past is prologue.

––William Shakespeare

Historians, rather like primitive moles / live purposeless lives in primitive holes / which they dig with their noses or else with their toeses / (A few invented small shovels and hoeses)  / They’re burrowing blindly in Byzantine tunnels / constructed like sinuous funnels / They’re burrowing busily back to the past / a steady regression to nowhere fast.

         —David Hackett Fischer

(Each week this column features quotations gleaned from the readings and experiences of our editors, reporters, readers, and friends. Submissions may be sent to Gleanings, c/o The Newtown Bee, 5 Church Hill Road, Newtown, CT 06470.)