top of page
"With each new book, the march of our national history takes a step forward. When one is present at a book launch, one is bearing witness to the birth of a new body of ideas, to the coming into being of another testimony of history."
Standard
Customized
Exlpore more History quotes

"The commonplace books of the old Puritans were invaluable to them. They would never have been able to compile such works as they did if they had not been careful in collecting and arranging their matter under different heads."

"The only lesson you can learn from history is that it repeats itself."

"Well, for us, in history where goodness is a rare pearl, he who was good almost takes precedence over he who was great."

"Robbing people of their actual history is the same as robbing them of part of themselves. It's a crime."Fuka-Eri thought about that for a moment.Tengo went on, "Our memory is made up of our individual memories and our collective memories. The two are intimately linked. And history is our collective memory. If our collective memory is taken from us - is rewritten - we lose the ability to sustain our true selves."

"It is notorious that the news of the Emancipation Proclamation was kept from the people of Texas and not celebrated until 'Juneteenth'. There may be those in Texas now who believe they can insulate their state-a state that had its own courageous revolution-from the news of evolution and from the writing in 1786 of a Constitution that refuses to mention religion except when demarcating and limiting its role in the public square. But we promise them today that they will join their fore-runners in the flat-earth community, and in the mad clerical clique of those who believed that the sun revolved around the earth. Yes, they will be in schoolbooks-as a joke on the epic scale of William Jennings Bryan. We shall be fair, and take care to ensure that their tale is told."

"Many if not most slaves would have each readily jumped, and many if not most slaves would each readily jump, at the opportunity to be a master, if such an opportunity presents or had presented itself."

"Mr. Charles Dickens was serializing his novel Oliver Twist; Mr. Draper had just taken the first photograph of the moon, freezing her pale face on cold paper; Mr. Morse had recently announced a way of transmitting messages down metal wires. Had you mentioned magic or Faerie to any of them, they would have smiled at you disdainfully, except, perhaps for Mr. Dickens, at the time a young man, and beardless. He would have looked at you wistfully."
Explore more quotes by Ibrahim Babangida

"But no nation can base its survival and development on luck and prayers alone while its leadership fritters away every available opportunity for success and concrete achievement."

"With each new book, the march of our national history takes a step forward. When one is present at a book launch, one is bearing witness to the birth of a new body of ideas, to the coming into being of another testimony of history."

"It is of course the nature of historical contraction that the shortest distance to a historical destination is never a straight line."

"The work of Nigeria is not complete for as long as there is any one Nigerian who goes to bed on empty stomach."

"A society that does not correctly interpret and appreciate its past cannot understand its present fortunes and adversities and can be caught unawares in a fast changing world."

"The history of our country is not the history of any other country in the world which is either practicing advanced democracy or struggling to lay the foundation for democracy."

"Each one of us, and, indeed, all those who aspire to national leadership must bring their own visions, views and styles to the business of reforming Nigeria, and the search for solutions."

"Our choice of a reform framework dictated that we looked at the fundamental assumptions that had driven Nigeria's economy, society and policy hitherto and to seek ways of either abandoning or transcending those assumptions and their supporting institutions."

"The challenge as we saw in the Nigerian project was to restructure the economy decisively in the direction of a modern free market as an appropriate environment for cultivation of freedom and democracy and the natural emergence of a new social order."

"For as long as our people are held hostage by controllable socio-economic forces, we cannot afford to be indifferent to the ravages of poverty in all its dimensions and ramifications."
bottom of page