Charlie Gonzalez Quotes

History provides a sense of where we've been and lessons that can be taken forward.

Half of my library are old books because I like seeing how people thought about their world at their time. So that I don't get bigheaded about something we just discovered and I can be humble about where we might go next. Because you can see who got stuff right and most of the people who got stuff wrong.

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.

History lets you know exactly where you are today. And if you pay attention to it, it gives you a broad perspective of everyone. You can relate it to pretty much any time.

To find out what we presently are and where we are going, we must know what we have been and what others have done; and this, because the humanities are at once the creation and the interpreters of the past, is the great purpose of humanistic scholarship.

We are not buried in history, but surrounded by it. You can't avoid our behavior being shaped by it, to a considerable degree. We have this fantasy that we are free of history. This allows us not to see the circumstances, the historical circumstances of other people.

I do not believe that any man can adequately appreciate the world of to-day unless he has some knowledge of -- a little more than a slight knowledge, some feeling for and of -- the history of the world of the past.

Retrospective analysis is not a useful guide to current problems.

I think in order to move forward into the future, you need to know where you've been.

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

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.

I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging of the future but by the past

The present enables us to understand the past, not the other way round.

Writing history is writing the soul of the past...

History is the single discipline from the world of learning that most informs action in the world. So if you ask world leaders what guides them in making decisions about a new circumstance that they have just encountered it is usually implicitly “a little like this” or “a little like” something else that happened in the past. They use that much more than they use political science theories or economic theories. It is “what is this like that has happened in the past”.

Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it.

Understanding history means knowing what motivates you.

I think if we don't understand history, if we don't keep referring back to it, we become complacent. And complacency, as we all know, it leads to repeating history.

Being in London has really taught me how important history is. Just having information of the past. It helps you predict the future, which is all we really have as, you know, humans.

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

One should live with history round one.

I'm always wary of the lessons of the past. There's a lot of past out there, and you can draw whatever lessons you want.

I can't change history but only learn from it.

I like history because you can't really progress without knowing what comes before you, so I think it's super fascinating.