Richard Holbrooke Quotes

The task of understanding the past is neverending.

History justifies whatever we want it to. It teaches absolutely nothing, for it contains everything and gives examples of everything.

From the very beginning, history wasn't content simply to be nostalgic fairytales; it wanted to make you think.

We have need of history in its entirety, not to fall back into it, but to see if we can escape from it.

While writing books about the past, I think about the present. It's not intentional, but somehow my books end up being written under the sign of a political mood.

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.

An accurate knowledge of the past of a country is necessary for everyone who would understand its present, and who desires to judge of its future.

So often when we historicize material, we use this big wide-angle lens.

History is nothing but gossip about the past, with the hope that it might be true.

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.

You can't say history teaches us this or that; it gives us more questions than answers, and many answers to every question.

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

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.

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

I don't think you learn specific lessons from history, but you do learn proportion.

History is the present. That's why every generation writes it anew. But what most people think of as history is its end product.

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

There is a difference between remembrance of history and reverence of it.

The only reason to keep talking about history is if you are juxtaposing it with the world that we live in today, if you are learning something about our world by looking at the way they shaped their world.

A good history covers not only what was done, but the thought that went into the action. You can read the history of a country through its actions.

Leave history to historians.

Like most of those who study history, he (Napoleon III) learned from the mistakes of the past how to make new ones.

But every historical statement and legitimization itself moves within a certain relation to history.

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