A Quote by Edward Gibbon

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

Edward Gibbon

Quote Topics

History Follies Indeed Little Mankind Misfortunes More Register Than

Quote Author

Edward Gibbon
English - Historian
April 27, 1737 - January 16, 1794

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

Edward Gibbon

Antoninus diffused order and tranquility over the greatest part of the earth. His reign is marked by the rare advantage of furnishing very few materials for history; which is, indeed, little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.

Edward Gibbon

The history of fiat money is little more than a register of monetary follies and inflations. Our present age merely affords another entry in this dismal register.

Hans F. Sennholz

Indeed, history is nothing more than a tableau of crimes and misfortunes.

Voltaire

History is only the register of crimes and misfortunes.

Voltaire

History in general is a collection of crimes, follies, and misfortunes among which we have now and then met with a few virtues, and some happy times.

Voltaire

History, in fact, is no more than a list of the crimes of humanity, human follies and accidents

Edward Gibbon

History is but the record of crimes and misfortunes. L'histoire n'est que le tableau des crimes et des malheurs

Voltaire

One's conscience reproaches one much more stingingly for one's follies than one's crimes.

Geraldine Jewsbury

What is public history but a register of the successes and disappointments, the vices, the follies and the quarrels of those who engage in contention for power.

William S. Paley

Properly speaking, history is nothing but the crimes and misfortunes of the human race.

Pierre Bayle

History is but a kind of Newgate calendar, a register of the crimes and miseries that man has inflicted on his fellow-man.

Washington Irving

I believe, indeed, that it is more laudable to suffer great misfortunes than to do great things.

Stanislaw I Leszczynski

If an historian were to relate truthfully all the crimes, weaknesses, and disorders of mankind, his readers would take his work for satire rather than for history.

Pierre Bayle

Crimes were committed to punish crimes, and crimes were committed to prevent crimes. The world has been filled with prisons and dungeons, with chains and whips, with crosses and gibbets, with thumbscrews and racks, with hangmen and heads-men — and yet these frightful means and instrumentalities have committed far more crimes than they have prevented.... Ignorance, filth, and poverty are the missionaries of crime. As long as dishonorable success outranks honest effort — as long as society bows and cringes before the great thieves, there will be little ones enough to fill the jails.