Topic ideas from Smithsonian.com...
Topic ideas from History Today...
History is the study of the human past as it is described in the written documents left by human beings. Here are a collection of more history definitions...
History Definition
History is a narration of the events which have happened among mankind, including an account of the rise and fall of nations, as well as of other great changes which have affected the political and social condition of the human race.—John J. Anderson. 1876. A Manual of General History.
History is not what you thought. It is what you remember. All other history defeats itself.—W. C. Sellar and R. J. Yeatman. 1930 Preface, 1066 and All That.
History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.—James Joyce.Ulysses. 1922(1988) Published by Oxford University Press. P. 34
History not used is nothing, for all intellectual life is action, like practical life, and if you don't use the stuff well, it might as well be dead.—Arnold J. Toynbee April 17, 1955. NBC television broadcast.
The Psychohistorian
If a science of history were achieved, it would, like the science of celestial mechanics, make possible the calculable prediction of the future in history. It would bring the totality of historical occurrences within a single field and reveal the unfolding future to its last end, including all the apparent choices made and to be made. It would be omniscience. The creator of it would possess the attributes ascribed by the theologians to God.
The future once revealed, humanity would have nothing to do except to await its doom.—Charles Austin Beard. 1933. "Written History as an Act of Fate." Annual address of the president of the American Historical Association, delivered at Urbana, Illinois. December 28, 1933. American Historical Review 39(2):219-231.
History is and should be a science. .... History is not the accumulation of events of every kind which happened in the past. It is the science of human societies.—Fustel de Coulanges
The first foundations of all history are the recitals of the fathers to the children, transmitted afterward from one generation to another; at their origin they are at the very most probable, when they do not shock common sense, and they lose one degree of probability in each generation.—Voltaire [1694-1778]. The Philosophical Dictionary. translated 1924 by H.I. Woolf
History is ... a dialogue between the present and the past. (originally: Geschichte ist ... ein Dialog zwischen Gegenwart und Vergangenheit.)— Edward Hallet Carr. 1961. What Is History? New York: Vintage Books.
HISTORY, n. An account mostly false, of events mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly fools: Of Roman history, great Niebuhr's shown 'Tis nine-tenths lying. Faith, I wish 'twere known, Ere we accept great Niebuhr as a guide, Wherein he blundered and how much he lied. (Salder Bupp) —Ambrose Bierce. 1911. Devil's Dictionary
A Pack of Tricks
History is nothing but a pack of tricks we play on the dead. (French original) J'ay vu un temps où vous n'aimiez guères l'histoire. Ce n'est après tout qu'un ramas de tracasseries qu'on fait aux morts...) —Voltaire (Francois Marie Arouet). 1757. Letter to Pierre Robert Le Cornier de Cideville. In Voltaire's Correspondence vol. xxxi. edited by Theodore Besterman, 1958. Geneva
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 or pestilences, in every page; the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all—it is very tiresome.— Catherine Morland [Jane Austen]. 1803. Northanger Abbey.
The major lessons of history? There are four: First, whom the gods destroy they first make mad with power. Second, the mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceeding small. Third, the bee fertilizes the flower it robs. Fourth, when it is dark enough you can see the stars.—Although this quote has been attributed to historian Charles Austin Beard I couldn't find an original source. This version is the one Martin Luther King used in "The death of evil upon the seashore" in Strength to Love, 1981. Fortress Press, p. 83
History Definition for the Cranky
Most events recorded in history are more remarkable than important, like eclipses of the sun and moon, by which all are attracted, but whose effects no one takes the trouble to calculate.—Henry David Thoreau. 1849. A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers.
After such knowledge, what forgiveness? Think now
History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors
And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions,
Guides us by vanities. Think now
She gives when our attention is distracted
And what she gives, gives with such supple confusions
That the giving famishes the craving. Gives too late
What's not believed in, or if still believed,
In memory only, reconsidered passion. Gives too soon
Into weak hands, what's thought can be dispensed with
Till the refusal propagates a fear. Think
Neither fear nor courage saves us. Unnatural vices
Are fathered by our heroism. Virtues
Are forced upon us by our impudent crimes.
These tears are shaken from the wrath-bearing tree.
—T.S. Eliot. 1920 Gerontion. In The Waste Land, Prufrock and Other Poems.
So very difficult a matter it is to trace and find out the truth of anything by history. —Plutarch. ca. 46-120 AD—from Dryden's translation of Plutarch's Lives, edited and revised by A. H. Clough
Courtesy of ThoughtCo.com: https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-history-collection-of-definitions-171282