Famous Opinions on the Importance of the Study of History

There is, and always has been, some debate on the necessity of the study of history.  Some believe the study of the past is an important insight into who we are as individuals, nations and as a species.  However others hold that the information that can be gleaned from studying history is too scant and inevitably biased.  Down the ages, many great minds have had something to say on this subject, here are just a few examples.

Voltaire (1694 - 1778)

"There is no history, only fictions of varying degrees of plausibility" (Image Source).

Aristotle (384 BC - 322 BC)

"If you would understand anything, observe its beginning and its development" (Image Source).

Sir Winston Churchill (1874 - 1965)

"History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it" ( Image Source).

Public Enemy (From the song Brothers gonna work it out, 1990)

"History shouldn't be a mystery; our story is real history not his-story (Image Source).

Aldous Leonard Huxley (1894 - 1963)

"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" (Image Source).

Gerda Lerner (1920 - Present)

"What we do about history matters. The often repeated saying that those who forget the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them has a lot of truth in it. But what are 'the lessons of history'? The very attempt at definition furnishes ground for new conflicts. History is not a recipe book; past events are never replicated in the present in quite the same way. Historical events are infinitely variable and their interpretations are a constantly shifting process. There are no certainties to be found in the past" (Image Source).

Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli (1469 - 1527)

"Whoever wishes to foresee the future must consult the past; for human events ever resemble those of preceding times. This arises from the fact that they are produced by men who ever have been, and ever shall be, animated by the same passions, and thus they necessarily have the same results." (Image Source).

Henry Ford (1863 - 1947)

"History is more or less bunk. It's tradition. We don't want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker's damn is the history we make today" (Image Source).

Jane Austen (1775 - 1817)

"History, real solemn history, I cannot be interested in.... I read it a little as a duty; but it tells me nothing that does not either vex or weary me. The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars and pestilences in every page; the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all - it is very tiresome" (Spoken by Catherine Morland in Northanger Abbey) (Image Source).

Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900)

"Anybody can make history. Only a great man can write it" ( Image Source).