Laurel Thatcher Ulrich Quotes

History dies without the present. There is no future without the path made to it by the past.

History is more or less bunk.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century we abandoned tradition, it's at that point that I intend to renew it because the present is built on the past just as the past was built on the times that went before it.

I think there's a tide that tends to carry historians back to the past.

History is the present day consideration of what went before.

The practical value of history is to throw the film of the past through the material projector of the present on to the screen of the future.

I'm interested in the way in which the past affects the present and I think that if we understand a good deal more about history, we automatically understand a great more about contemporary life.

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

If the past has nothing to say to the present, history may go on sleeping undisturbed in the closet where the system keeps its old disguises.

Construed as a means instead of an end, history is the weapon with which we defend the future against the past.

No matter how much time has passed, these things still affect us and the world we live in. If you don't pay attention to the past, you'll never understand the future. It's all linked together.

All history must be mobilized if one would understand the present.

Old events have modern meanings; only that survives of past history which finds kindred in all hearts and lives.

I was a terrible history student. They taught me history as if it were a visit to a wax museum or to the land of the dead. I was over twenty before I discovered that the past was neither quiet nor mute.

History, well taught, is the demythologising of the past... Take any important issue of our time - Northern Ireland, Nuclear Disarmament, Race, The Welfare State, South Africa - and it becomes impossible to seriously confront any of them without understanding their historical background.

The present grows within the boundaries of the past.

History can't be left to fend for itself. For when it comes to history and beliefs and values, we turn our future on the lathe of the past.

I'm fascinated about how past events shape our perception of current events and how they make us the people we are.

To view current events as a historian is to account for all perspectives, even those of your enemy

What history teaches us is that man does not change arbitrarily; he does not transform himself at will on hearing the voices of inspired prophets. The reason is that all change, in colliding with the inherited institutions of the past, is inevitably hard and laborious; consequently it only takes place in response to the demands of necessity. For change to be brought about it is not enough that it should be seen as desirable; it must be the product of changes within the whole network of diverse casual relationships which then determine the situation of man.

The past gives great examples of what can happen in the future. It's always important to remember.

To understand the living present, and the promise of the future, it is necessary to remember the past.

You can't make sense of the present unless a part of you lives in the past.

If we read the words and attitudes of the past through the pompous "wisdom" of the considered moral judgments of the present, we will find nothing but error.

I love history. It was the only thing I did well at in school. I'm not ashamed to admit that I was not a good student but I was great at history.