Charles William Eliot Quotes

History is what we would make of it.

Nations without a past are contradictions in terms. What makes a nation is the past, what justifies one nation against others is the past, and historians are the people who produce it.

The history of this country is told by showing people who have contributed to it.

Each generation confronts new problems, encounters new facts, and tells our history somewhat differently.

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

My country has no history, only a past.

History, in illuminating the past, illuminates the present, and in illuminating the present, illuminates the future.

What is history but a fable agreed upon?

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

History can show you that it was one pile of bad stuff after another. It can also show you that there's been tremendous progress in knowledge, behaviour, laws, civilisation. It cannot show you that there was a meaning behind it.

History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon.

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.

I'm interested in where we are, where we're going, where we've come from.

History never looks like history when you are living through it.

History is formed by the people, those who have power and those without power. Each one of us makes history.

Most of us get our history through story.

If history starts as a guest list, it has a tendency to end like the memory of a drunken party: misheard, blurred, fragmentary.

While we read history we make history.

I study history in order to give an interpretation.

The problem of telling contemporary history is that your message gets outdated.

The way you 'take history' is also a way of 'making history.'

History is neither a political fable in which all the brothers are valiant and all the sisters virtuous, nor is it a tabloid expose, full of crimes and follies, signifying nothing but victimization. There is, I must admit, a caustic delight in unveiling the frailties of our Jeffersons and our Lincolns, but the delight turns malevolent when it serves only to strip the American past of anything remarkable or exceptional, or when it demeans or discourages civic engagement and confidence.

History is a battleground... but it has always been the case. Remembering is a radical act. Choosing what is important and what belongs in the overstuffed metaphorical dustbin of history is of vital importance.

Ere we can forecast the future we must understand the present and bring a just sense of proportion to our review of the history of the past.

A nation’s attitude toward its own history is like a window into its own soul.