Marcus Tullius Cicero Quotes

Not to have knowledge of what happened before you were born is to be condemned to live as a child.

Not to know what has been transacted in former times is to continue always a child.

A man acquainted with history may, in some respect, be said to have lived from the beginning of the world, and to have been making continual additions to his stock of knowledge in every century.

I can't change history but only learn from it.

To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. For what is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?

Not to know what happened before one was born is always to be a child.

To build up a future, you have to know the past.

To be ignorant of the lives of the most celebrated men of antiquity is to continue in a state of childhood all our days.

I think you can learn from history.

I have often wondered what it is an old building can do to you when you happen to know a little about things that went on long ago in that building.

Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it.

Certainly, the illiterates of past centuries, then an enormous majority of mankind, knew little of the history of their respective countries and of their civilization. In the minds of modern illiterates, however, who know how to read and write and even teach in schools and at universities, history is present but blurred, in a state of strange confusion; Molière becomes a contemporary of Napoleon, Voltaire, a contemporary of Lenin.

Know thy history. Let it horrify you; let it inspire you.

To remain ignorant of history is to remain forever a child

Not to know what happened before means to remain forever a child.

To be ignorant of the past is to be forever a child.

All our yesterdays, it is true, have only lighted fools the way to dusty death. But we need at least the dates of the yesterdays and the list of the fools.

It is important to know the stories and histories of things, even if all we know is that we don't know.

A man is wise with the wisdom of his time only, and ignorant with its ignorance.

Not to know what happened before you were born is to be a child forever. For what is the time of a man, except it be interwoven with that memory of ancient things of a superior age?

A man who has no sense of history is like a man who has no ears or no eyes.

The great Roman statesman Cicero observed that, 'Not to know what happened before one was born is to be always a child.' In our ignorance of the values that form part of our history and heritage, we Americans have become perpetual children.

All ignorance toboggans into know and trudges up to ignorance again.

Ignorance is death, knowledge is life. Life is of very little value, if it is a life in the dark, groping through ignorance and misery.

Those who do not know history are probably also not doing well in English or math. P.J. O'Rourke