Henry Williams Brands Quotes

It would be well if, in studying the past, we could always bear in mind the problems of the present

What I'm passionate about is History, and politics interest me only insofar as it is the cross-section of History in the present.

The history of the past interests us only in so far as it illuminates the history of the present.

Trying to recreate for people the ways in which the past was similar to the present is an important part of what a historian has to do, and what a student of foreign policy has to do.

No single conflict from the past can serve as a reliable model for struggles in the present.

Modern political science started in the late nineteenth century as a branch of history.

No one ever really 'learns' from history, because choices never present themselves in exactly the same way, and because you can always choose similarities and differences to fit current needs.

It may be enough to study history in all its nuance and ambiguity for its own sake. But there is no country free of the need to find new ways of reading the past as an inspiring way of thinking about everything else, including the present.

The problem of telling contemporary history is that your message gets outdated.

History is past politics, and politics present history.

Ancient histories provide windows to knowing current affairs.

History is not a blueprint for present practice.

The political biographies most popular in the modern era often tell us less about their subjects than about the moment in which the books themselves are published.

Politics is history in the present tense

Party historians go to the past for party purposes; they seek to read into the past the controversies of the present.

At a time when politics has become an almost minute-by-minute spectacle, political thinkers who try to discern a sweeping interpretive pattern in current events or to predict where those events may be heading are likely to find their work evaluated in terms dismayingly like those applied to candidates and strategists. One wrong guess, or an abrupt change in the political weather, can make even an illuminating political book seem as irrelevant as a bungled campaign.

A lot of people are surprised when I talk so much about the present, but politics is just a crucial part of archaeology.

Punditry is like weather forecasting: the winds can shift without warning. I remember when nobody would bet a McDonald's Quarter Pounder that Bill Clinton would win the White House.

My work as a whole is about excavating and shining a light on pieces of history that not only need to be seen and heard, but that can also add to the conversation about what's going on now.

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

It is difficult to discuss... history.. it is more difficult to talk about today.. simple things…

The study of history, while it does not endow with prophecy, may indicate lines of probability.

In history lies all the secrets of statecraft.

One test of a great work of history is does it make you feel like you have lived through the period

Americans treat history like a cookbook. Whenever they are uncertain what to do next, they turn to history and look up the proper recipe, invariably designated "the lesson of history.