Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes

Until we perceive the meaning of our past, we remain the mere carriers of ideas, like the Nomads.

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

Can't disagree with the need for a grasp of history.

I think that America has an obsession with history, really.

Most of us, I think, are conscious of history swirling around outside the door, but when we're in the house, we're usually not dealing with history. We're not thinking about history.

You cannot not know history.

Without history we are the prisoners of the accident of where and when we were born.

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 think people in general have neglected to learn about history.

I really feel sorry for kids who aren't interested in history - recent history, either, because it is this that made us what we are.

I was always deeply aware that I was living in history.

The Greeks have given to the world the science of history; the Israelites gave to the world historical religion. In contrast to all their neighbors, both peoples knew what history is; this is no consequence of their mental giftedness, however, for there is another reason. Through mighty events both peoples experienced what history is, and by the investment of their lives they made history.

History is written not only for posterity but by posterity as well.

The lack of a sense of history is the damnation of the modern world.

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

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

Without understanding your history, you can't get a perspective about the present.

One should live with history round one.

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

History is not the story of strangers, aliens from another realm; it is the story of us had we been born a little earlier. History is memory; we have to remember what it is like to be a Roman, or a Jacobite or a Chartist or even - if we dare, and we should dare - a Nazi. History is not abstraction, it is the enemy of abstraction.

The unhistorical are usually, without knowing it, enslaved to a fairly recent past.

A lack of the historical sense is the hereditary fault of all philosophers.

To have a sense of history one must consider oneself a piece of history.

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

We need to haunt the house of history and listen anew to the ancestors' wisdom.