Timeless Wisdom: A Curated Collection of Historical Inspirational Quotes

"I came, I saw, I conquered."

- Julius Caesar

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

- George Santayana

"Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall."

- Confucius

"I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will."

- Charlotte Brontë

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

- Edmund Burke

"Study the past if you would define the future."

- Confucius

"Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up."

- Thomas Edison

"You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life."

- Steve Jobs

"A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history."

- Mohandas Gandhi

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."

- Mark Twain

"Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it."

- Steve Jobs

"If you’re going through hell, keep going."

- Winston Churchill

"Never, never and never again shall it be that this beautiful land will again experience the oppression of one by another."

- Nelson Mandela

"Human rights are not things that are put on the table for people to enjoy. These are things you fight for and then you protect."

- Wangari Maathai

"That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons of history."

- Aldous Huxley

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

- Winston S. Churchill

"History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again."

- Maya Angelou

"You miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take."

- Wayne Gretzky

"Don’t limit yourself. Many people limit themselves to what they think they can do. You can go as far as your mind lets you. What you believe, remember, you can achieve."

- Mary Kay Ash

"The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why."

- Mark Twain

"It often requires more courage to dare to do right than to fear to do wrong."

- Abraham Lincoln

"If you want to achieve excellence, you can get there today. As of this second, quit doing less-than-excellent work."

- Thomas J. Watson

"If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more, you are a leader."

- John Quincy Adams

"A dream doesn’t become reality through magic; it takes sweat, determination, and hard work."

- Colin Powell

"The biggest risk is not taking any risk… In a world that’s changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks."

- Mark Zuckerberg

"Do one thing every day that scares you."

- Eleanor Roosevelt

"The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary."

- Vidal Sassoon

"Don’t be afraid to give up the good to go for the great."

- John D. Rockefeller

"Though no one can go back and make a brand-new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand-new ending."

- Carl Bard

"Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Keep on going, and the chances are that you will stumble on something, perhaps when you are least expecting it. I never heard of anyone ever stumbling on something sitting down."

- Charles F. Kettering

"It is never too late to be what you might have been."

- George Eliot

"As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others."

- Bill Gates

"Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken."

- Oscar Wilde

"If you don’t design your own life plan, chances are you’ll fall into someone else’s plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much."

- Jim Rohn

"But you have to do what you dream of doing even while you’re afraid."

- Arianna Huffington

"Be patient with yourself. Self-growth is tender; it’s holy ground. There’s no greater investment."

- Stephen Covey

"The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history."

- George Orwell

"If you don't know history, then you don't know anything. You are a leaf that doesn't know it is part of a tree."

- Michael Crichton

"One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back."

- Carl Sagan

"That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach."

- Aldous Huxley

"You have to make more noise than anybody else, you have to make yourself more obtrusive than anybody else, you have to fill all the papers more than anybody else, in fact you have to be there all the time and see that they do not show you under, if you are really going to get your reform realised."

- Emmeline Pankhurst

"Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less."

- Marie Curie

"People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn't true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I was at the end of a working day… No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in."

- Rosa Parks

"There must be more equality established in society, or morality will never gain ground, and this virtuous equality will not rest firmly even when founded on a rock, if one half of mankind be chained to its bottom by fate, for they will be continually undermining it through ignorance or pride."

- Mary Wollstonecraft

"I am a woman who came from the cotton fields of the South. From there I was promoted to the washtub. From there I was promoted to the cook kitchen. And from there I promoted myself into the business of manufacturing hair goods and preparations… I have built my own factory on my own ground."

- Madam C.J. Walker

"Women must try to do things as men have tried. When they fail, their failure must be but a challenge to others."

- Amelia Earhart

"For most of history, Anonymous was a woman."

- Virginia Woolf

"We are not makers of history. We are made by history."

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

"You must expect great things of yourself before you can do them."

- Michael Jordan

"Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can."

- Arthur Ashe

"If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality."

- Desmond Tutu

"We have to build things that we want to see accomplished, in life and in our country, based on our own personal experiences ... to make sure that others ... do not have to suffer the same discrimination."

- Patsy Mink

"If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough."

- Albert Einstein

"There are two types of people who will tell you that you cannot make a difference in this world: those who are afraid to try and those who are afraid you will succeed."

- Ray Goforth

"Keep your face to the sunshine and you can never see the shadow."

- Helen Keller

"History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme."

- Mark Twain

"If you want something said, ask a man; if you want something done, ask a woman."

- Margaret Thatcher

"Get up tomorrow early in the morning, and earlier than you did today, and do the best that you can. Always stay near me, for tomorrow I will have much to do and more than I ever had, and tomorrow blood will leave my body above the breast."

- Joan of Arc

"In the midst of movement and chaos, keep stillness inside of you."

- Deepak Chopra

"There are no extraordinary men... just extraordinary circumstances that ordinary men are forced to deal with."

- William Halsey

"Everything you can imagine is real."

- Pablo Picasso

"The greatest problem in the world today is intolerance. Everyone is so intolerant of each other."

- Princess Diana

"Few will have the greatness to bend history itself; but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total; of all those acts will be written the history of this generation."

- Robert Kennedy

"All progress takes place outside the comfort zone."

- Michael John Bobak

"The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate."

- Oprah Winfrey

"To be ‘in charge’ is certainly not only to carry out the proper measures yourself, but to see that everyone else does so too."

- Florence Nightingale

"History is always written by the winners. When two cultures clash, the loser is obliterated, and the winner writes the history books-books which glorify their own cause and disparage the conquered foe. As Napoleon once said, 'What is history, but a fable agreed upon?"

- Dan Brown

"To be successful, you must accept all challenges that come your way. You can’t just accept the ones you like."

- Mike Gafka

"Be as a tower firmly set; Shakes not its top for any blast that blows."

- Dante Alighieri

"I shall do my utmost to fulfil my duty towards my country; I am very young and perhaps in many, though not in all things, inexperienced, but I am sure, that very few have more real good will and more real desire to do what is fit and right than I have..."

- Queen Victoria

"Our greatest fear should not be of failure… but of succeeding at things in life that don’t really matter."

- Francis Chan

"Don’t worry about failure; you only have to be right once."

- Drew Houston

"Women are like teabags – you don’t know how strong they are until you put them in hot water"

- Eleanor Roosevelt

"I don’t want to get to the end of my life and find that I lived just the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well."

- Diane Ackerman

"Most of the things worth doing in the world had been declared impossible before they were done."

- Louis D. Brandeis

"History is a vast early warning system."

- Norman Cousins

"The first duty of a man is to think for himself"

- Jose Marti

"If I follow the inclination of my nature, it is this: beggar-woman and single, far rather than queen and married."

- Elizabeth I

"People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them."

- James Baldwin

"Those who do not move, do not notice their chains."

- Rosa Luxemburg

"I cannot lead you into battle. I do not give you laws or administer justice but I can do something else - I can give my heart and my devotion to these old islands and to all the peoples of our brotherhood of nations."

- Queen Elizabeth II

"One of the greatest diseases is to be nobody to anybody."

- Mother Teresa

"There are only patterns, patterns on top of patterns, patterns that affect other patterns. Patterns hidden by patterns. Patterns within patterns. If you watch close, history does nothing but repeat itself. What we call chaos is just patterns we haven't recognized. What we call random is just patterns we can't decipher. what we can't understand we call nonsense. What we can't read we call gibberish. There is no free will. There are no variables."

- Chuck Palahniuk

"Life is short, and it is here to be lived."

- Kate Winslet

"History is a set of lies agreed upon."

- Napoleon Bonaparte

"I believe myself to possess a most singular combination of qualities exactly fitted to make me pre-eminently a discoverer of the hidden realities of nature."

- Ada Lovelace

"Letting go means to come to the realization that some people are a part of your history, but not a part of your destiny."

- Steve Maraboli

"Unless I am allowed to tell the story of my life in my own way, I cannot tell it at all."

- Mary Seacole

"Women, we might as well be dogs baying the moon as petitioners without the right to vote!"

- Susan B. Anthony

"Posterity! You will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom! I hope you will make a good use of it."

- John Adams

"The world we see that seems so insane is the result of a belief system that is not working. To perceive the world differently, we must be willing to change our belief system, let the past slip away, expand our sense of now, and dissolve the fear in our minds."

- William James

"History never looks like history when you are living through it."

- John W. Gardner

"I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief... For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free."

- Wendell Berry

"History is not a burden on the memory but an illumination of the soul."

- John Dalberg-Acton

"The soul becomes dyed with the colour of its thoughts."

- Marcus Aurelius

"Observe good faith and justice toward all nations. Cultivate peace and harmony with all."

- George Washington

"They died hard, those savage men - like wounded wolves at bay. They were filthy, and they were lousy, and they stunk. And I loved them."

- Douglas MacArthur

"The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much it is whether we provide enough for those who have little."

- Franklin D. Roosevelt

"The whole course of human history may depend on a change of heart in one solitary and even humble individual - for it is in the solitary mind and soul of the individual that the battle between good and evil is waged and ultimately won or lost."

- M. Scott Peck

"We'll be remembered more for what we destroy than what we create."

- Chuck Palahniuk

"Be assured those will be thy worst enemies, not to whom thou hast done evil, but who have done evil to thee. And those will be thy best friends, not to whom thou hast done good, but who have done good to thee."

- Tacitus

"If anyone tells you that a certain person speaks ill of you, do not make excuses about what is said of you but answer, "He was ignorant of my other faults, else he would not have mentioned these alone.”"

- Epictetus

"I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past."

- Thomas Jefferson

"In my own marriage I paid such a terrible price for sex-ignorance that I feel that knowledge gained at such a cost should be placed at the service of humanity"

- Marie Stopes

"Americans love to fight. All real Americans love the sting of battle."

- George S. Patton

"A truly American sentiment recognizes the dignity of labor and the fact that honor lies in honest toil."

- Grover Cleveland

"People are always shouting they want to create a better future. It's not true. The future is an apathetic void of no interest to anyone. The past is full of life, eager to irritate us, provoke and insult us, tempt us to destroy or repaint it. The only reason people want to be masters of the future is to change the past."

- Milan Kundera

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

- Mark Twain

"Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists."

- Franklin D. Roosevelt

"History is the sum total of things that could have been avoided."

- Konrad Adenauer

"History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies."

- Alexis de Tocqueville

"I do not think it is an exaggeration to say history is largely a history of inflation, usually inflations engineered by governments for the gain of governments."

- Friedrich August von Hayek

"I did not come to NASA to make history."

- Sally Ride

"History is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind."

- Edward Gibbon

"God cannot alter the past, though historians can."

- Samuel Butler

"I have tried to lift France out of the mud. But she will return to her errors and vomitings. I cannot prevent the French from being French."

- Charles de Gaulle

"Every moment happens twice: inside and outside, and they are two different histories."

- Zadie Smith

"It takes an endless amount of history to make even a little tradition."

- Henry James

"If you don't like my ocean don't fish in my sea. Stay out of my valley and let my mountain be."

- Ma Rainey

"Following the light of the sun, we left the Old World."

- Christopher Columbus

"The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there."

- L.P. Hartley

"The longer I live, the more beautiful life becomes."

- Frank Lloyd Wright

"The best moments in reading are when you come across something – a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things – which you had thought special and particular to you. Now here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out and taken yours."

- Alan Bennett

"You must pursue this investigation of Watergate even if it leads to the president. I'm innocent. You've got to believe I'm innocent. If you don't, take my job."

- Richard M. Nixon

"Never say more than is necessary."

- Richard Brinsley Sheridan

"Peace, plenty, and contentment reign throughout our borders, and our beloved country presents a sublime moral spectacle to the world."

- James K. Polk

"History is a tool used by politicians to justify their intentions."

- Ted Koppel

"History is an endless repetition of the wrong way of living."

- Lawrence Durrell

"The deliberate and deadly attacks which were carried out yesterday against our country were more than acts of terror. They were acts of war."

- George W. Bush

"So that the record of history is absolutely crystal clear. That there is no alternative way, so far discovered, of improving the lot of the ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by a free enterprise system."

- Milton Friedman

"We awoke one morning in September, and the world lurched on its axis."

- Jeb Bush

"History is an account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools."

- Ambrose Bierce

"The construction of Europe is an art. It is the art of the possible."

- Jacques Chirac

"History is a cyclic poem written by time upon the memories of man."

- Percy Bysshe Shelley

"History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake."

- James Joyce

"History, like love, is so apt to surround her heroes with an atmosphere of imaginary brightness."

- James Fenimore Cooper

"The world is changed because you are made of ivory and gold. The curves of your lips rewrite history."

- Oscar Wilde

"I'm the only person of distinction who has ever had a depression named for him."

- Herbert Hoover

"Time is my greatest enemy."

- Evita Peron

"90 percent of my time is spent on 10 percent of the world."

- Colin Powell

"People that are really very weird can get into sensitive positions and have a tremendous impact on history."

- Dan Quayle

"I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have."

"Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day-in and day-out."

"The successful warrior is the average man, with laser-like focus."

"Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek."

"Successful people do what unsuccessful people are not willing to do. Don’t wish it were easier; wish you were better."

"Success does not consist in never making mistakes but in never making the same one a second time."

"The first step toward success is taken when you refuse to be a captive of the environment in which you first find yourself."

"The man who is swimming against the stream knows the strength of it."