One must always maintain ones connection to the past and yet ceaselessly pull away from it. To remain in touch with the past requires a love of memory. To remain in touch with the past requires a constant imaginative effort.
It has been said that though God cannot alter the past historians can; it is perhaps because they can be useful to Him in this respect that He tolerates their existence.
Not to know what has been transacted in former times is to be always a child. If no use is made of the labors of past ages the world must remain always in the infancy of knowledge.
The technologies which have had the most profound effects on human life are usually simple. A good example of a simple technology with profound historical consequences is hay. Nobody knows who invented hay the idea of cutting grass in the autumn and stor
If a man were called to fix the period in the history of the world during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous he would without hesitation name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus. [96?180 A.D.]
An historian should yield himself to his subject become immersed in the place and period of his choice standing apart from it now and then for a fresh view.
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.
Throughout history it has been the inaction of those who could have acted the indifference of those who should have known better the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most that has made it possible for evil to triumph.
We have the power to make this the best generation of mankind in the history of the world or to make it the last.
Histories make men wise; poets witty; the mathematics subtle; natural philosophy deep; moral grave; logic and rhetoric able to contend.
An archaeologist is the best husband a woman can have; the older she gets the more interested he is in her.
The farther backwards you can look the farther forward you are likely to see.
History repeats itself and thats one of the things thats wrong with history.
It is all one to me if a man comes from Sing Sing or Harvard. We hire a man not a history.
My argument is that War makes rattling good history; but Peace is poor reading.
That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons of history.
History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.
Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history.
The great thing about History is that it is adaptable.
Judging from the main portions of the history of the world so far justice is always in jeopardy.
Nothing has really happened until it has been recorded.
History is not a web woven with innocent hands. Among all the causes which degrade and demoralize men power is the most constant and most active.
History is the sum total of things that could have been avoided.
Man is a history-making creature who can neither repeat his past nor leave it behind.
Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the men of old; seek what they sought.
One must always maintain ones connection to the past and yet ceaselessly pull away from it. To remain in touch with the past requires a love of memory. To remain in touch with the past requires a constant imaginative effort.
History does not repeat itself. Historians repeat each other.
The past is a work of art full of irrelevancies and loose ends.
Learning history is easy; learning its lessons seems almost impossibly difficult.
PREHISTORIC adj. Belonging to an early period and a museum. Antedating the art and practice of perpetuating falsehood.
One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say.
History is an endless repetition of the wrong way of living.
You cant make up anything anymore. The world itself is a satire. All youre doing is recording it.
If past history was all there was to the game the richest people would be librarians.
It has been said that though God cannot alter the past historians can; it is perhaps because they can be useful to Him in this respect that He tolerates their existence.
Not to know what has been transacted in former times is to be always a child. If no use is made of the labors of past ages the world must remain always in the infancy of knowledge.
Learn not only to find what you like learn to like what you find.’08-02-2010
History is philosophy teaching by examples.
The technologies which have had the most profound effects on human life are usually simple. A good example of a simple technology with profound historical consequences is hay. Nobody knows who invented hay the idea of cutting grass in the autumn and stor
Political history is largely an account of mass violence and of the expenditure of vast resources to cope with mythical fears and hopes.
The history of liberty has largely been the history of the observance of procedural safeguards.
We have need of history in its entirety not to fall back into it but to see if we can escape from it.
If a man were called to fix the period in the history of the world during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous he would without hesitation name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus. [96?180 A.D.]
A page of history is worth a pound of logic.
Events in the past may be roughly divided into those which probably never happened and those which do not matter.
History knows no resting places and no plateaus.
Perhaps in time the so-called Dark Ages will be thought of as including our own.
I claim not to have controlled events but confess plainly that events have controlled me.
The men who make history have not time to write it.
An historian should yield himself to his subject become immersed in the place and period of his choice standing apart from it now and then for a fresh view.
What is history but a fable agreed upon?
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.
The worst thing about history is that every time it repeats itself the price goes up.
Those who can not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
Throughout history it has been the inaction of those who could have acted the indifference of those who should have known better the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most that has made it possible for evil to triumph.
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.
Study men not historians.
The very ink with which history is written is merely fluid prejudice.