History Quotes
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History Quotes
Politicians say the darndest things. Click on any History quote below to see it in context and find out where it falls on Shmoop's pretentious scale. We'll give you details on who said it, when they said it, and in some cases, why on earth they thought it was okay to say it.
For more History quotes, head on over to our History section, choose a topic, click Facts in the navigation, and then choose Quotes.
"Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants so long as it is black."Source: My Life and Work (1923) | Author: Henry Ford
"Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country."Source: Inauguration Address, January 20, 1961 | Speaker: John F. Kennedy
"Change will not come if we wait for some other person or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek."Source: February 5, 2008 Speech | Speaker: Barack Obama
"Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success."Source: Henry Ford's Marketing Team | Speaker: Henry Ford
"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."Source: "Loving Your Enemies" Sermon, Christmas Day 1957 | Speaker: Martin Luther King Jr.
"Don't fire until you see the whites of their eyes!"Source: Battle of Bunker Hill | Speaker: William Prescott
"Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise."Source: Poor Richard's Almanack | Author: Benjamin Franklin
"Even a mistake may turn out to be the one thing necessary to a worthwhile achievement."Source: Henry Ford's Marketing Team | Speaker: Henry Ford
"From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs."Source: Critique of the Gotha Program | Author: Karl Marx
"Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration."Source: Not verified | Speaker: Thomas Edison
"Give me liberty, or give me death!"Source: Virginia Convention in Richmond on March 20, 1775 | Speaker: Patrick Henry
"God doesn't play dice with the world."Source: Einstein and the Poet: In Search of the Cosmic Man | Speaker: Albert Einstein
"Hitler didn't snub me—it was our president who snubbed me. The president didn't even send me a telegram."Source: A Republican Rally in Baltimore, Maryland | Speaker: Jesse Owens
"I am not afraid; I was born to do this."Source: Spoken as she left the town of Vancouleurs | Speaker: Joan of Arc
"I did not have sexual relations with that woman."Source: Televised Press Conference | Speaker: Bill Clinton
"I have not yet begun to fight."Source: Spoken on September 23, 1779 | Speaker: Captain John Paul Jones
"I have observed this in my experience of slavery, that whenever my condition was improved, instead of its increasing my contentment, it only increased my desire to be free, and set me to thinking of plans to gain my freedom."Source: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass | Author: Frederick Douglass
"I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy."Source: 1780 Letter | Author: John Adams
"In recognizing the humanity of our fellow beings, we pay ourselves the highest tribute."Source: Furman v. Georgia | Author: Thurgood Marshall
"In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes."Source: 1789 Letter | Author: Benjamin Franklin
"It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma."Source: BBC Radio Broadcast | Speaker: Winston Churchill
"Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other."Source: Trade Mart speech (undelivered) | Speaker: John F. Kennedy
"Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."Source: The Declaration of Independence | Author: Thomas Jefferson
"Mankind must put an end to war—or war will put an end to mankind."Source: Address to the UN General Assembly (1961) | Speaker: John F. Kennedy
"My country is the world; my countrymen are mankind."Source: Declaration of Sentiments, The Liberator Magazine | Author: William Lloyd Garrison
"Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few."Source: Speech to the House of Commons, August 20, 1940 | Speaker: Winston Churchill
"No man is good enough to govern any woman without her consent."Source: The annual convention of the California State Suffrage Association | Speaker: Susan B. Anthony
"Older men declare war. But it is the youth that must fight and die."Source: Speech to the 23rd Republican National Convention (June 1944) | Speaker: Herbert Hoover
"Our long national nightmare is over."Source: Inaugural Address, September 9, 1974 | Speaker: President Gerald Ford
"Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun."Source: Problems of War and Strategy | Speaker: Mao Zedong
"Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed."Source: Up from Slavery: An Autobiography | Author: Booker T. Washington
"That government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."Source: The Gettysburg Address | Author: Abraham Lincoln
"That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."Source: First Moon Landing | Speaker: Neil Armstrong
"The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."Source: March from Selma, 1965 | Speaker: Martin Luther King, Jr.
"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."Source: FDR's Inauguration Speech | Speaker: Franklin Delano Roosevelt
"The President—whoever he is—has to decide. He can't pass the buck to anybody."Source: Farewell Address (1953) | Speaker: Harry S. Truman
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."Source: Letter to Col. William S. Smith, November 13, 1787 | Author: Thomas Jefferson
"Things don't happen, they are made to happen."Source: University of North Dakota Address | Speaker: John F. Kennedy
"Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is the probable reason why so few engage in it."Source: The San Francisco Chronicle | Author: Henry Ford
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."Source: Pennsylvania Assembly | Author: Benjamin Franklin
"Today, in the world of freedom, the proudest boast is "Ich bin ein Berliner.""Source: Ich bin ein Berliner Speech | Speaker: John F. Kennedy
"War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over."Source: Speech to the Mayor and Councilmen of Atlanta (1864) | Speaker: William Tecumseh Sherman
"We are not makers of history; we are made by history."Source: Strength to Love | Author: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
"We have met the enemy and they are ours."Source: Letter to William Henry Harrison | Author: Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry
"We must guard against […] unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex."Source: Eisenhower's Farewell Address | Speaker: Dwight Eisenhower
"We shall never surrender."Source: We Shall Fight on the Beaches speech (June 1940) | Speaker: Winston Churchill
"We should emphasize not Negro History, but the Negro in history. What we need is not a history of selected races or nations, but the history of the world void of national bias, race hate, and religious prejudice."Source: "The Celebration of Negro History Week" in The Journal of Negro History | Author: Carter G. Woodson
"When in the course of human events…"Source: Declaration of Independence | Author: Thomas Jefferson
"When people ask me if I went to film school, I tell them, "No, I went to films.""Source: Interview with Andrew Walker of BBC News | Speaker: Quentin Tarantino
"Winning isn't everything; it's the only thing."Source: Spoken at Packers' Training Camp | Speaker: Vince Lombardi
"You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war."Source: 1946 Letter | Author: Albert Einstein
"You must do the thing you think you cannot do."Source: You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life | Author: Eleanor Roosevelt