Dan Rather Quotes

I think people in general have neglected to learn about history.

I'm a writer obsessed with remembering: with remembering the past of America above all - and above all, that of Latin America, intimate land condemned to forgetfulness.

Most of us get our history through story.

I don't think you should ever run from history. You should learn from it and embrace it.

Americans are in vital need of the instruction that historians can provide.

I don't think you can erase history.

Although I write to entertain, and try to keep my work free of didacticism, I do have a rather passionate belief in our need to be connected to - and to learn from - history.

Poles must understand history but we must also overcome it if it is obstructing our contemporary goals.

My first reaction every time I delve into an episode of history that I don't know very much about is... my first reaction is anger that my teachers never taught me about it.

If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten.

People don't know the past, even though we live in literate societies, because they don't trust the sources of the past.

It takes a perverse determination to drain that instinctive curiosity away and make history seem just remote, dead and disconnected from our contemporary reality. Conversely, it just takes skilful storytelling to recharge that connection to make the past come alive in our present.

There are moments in history that people should be reminded of.

No harm's done to history by making it something someone would want to read.

Learning from the past helps to ensure that mistakes are not repeated.

Backward is just not a natural direction for Americans to look - historical ignorance remains a national characteristic.

Americans today don’t know history—even the smart ones who went to Ivy League schools.

Making history whole is about uncovering secrets.

History is not ancestral memory or collective tradition. It is what people learned from priests, schoolmasters, the writers of history books, and the compilers of magazine articles and TV programs.

Only by not forgetting the past can we be the master of the future.

A nation builds museums to understand its own history and to have its history understood by others, to create a common space and language to address collectively what is too difficult to process individually.

If I could have anything - you know, and this is across the board for any presidential candidate - I would have a greater acknowledgment of history in our policy and in our affairs.

Histories are to educate so that we understand better for ourselves and for motivation.

Novels taught me that history is dramatic. I wanted my students to know that, too.

I don't think it's such a bad idea that people learn the same history in school. I think it tends to ground people and give them something to respond to and react against.