History: gossip well told.
~Elbert Hubbard, The Roycroft Dictionary

The history of the world is the record of a man in quest of his daily bread and butter.
~Hendrik Wilhelm van Loon, The Story of Mankind

History never looks like history when you are living through it. ~John W. Gardner

Each time history repeats itself, the price goes up.
~Author Unknown

History: An account mostly false, of events mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly fools.
~Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary

Every age has a keyhole to which its eye is pasted.
~Mary McCarthy, On the Contrary

The past actually happened but history is only what someone wrote down.
~A. Whitney Brown, The Big Picture

History is a pack of lies about events that never happened told by people who weren’t there.
~George Santayana

Every great writer is a writer of history, let him treat on almost any subject he may. ~Walter Savage Landor, Imaginary Conversation: Diogenes and Plato
History is not the past, but a map of the past drawn from a particular point of view to be useful to the modern traveler.
~Henry Glassie

History is the open Bible: we historians are not priests to expound it infallibly: our function is to teach people to read it and to reflect upon it for themselves.
~George Macaulay Trevelyan

Delusion about history is a serious matter; it can gravely affect the history that is waiting to be made.
~John Terraine

History supplies little beyond a list of those who have accommodated themselves with the property of others.
~Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary