Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel Quotes

The past has infinite value if one learns from it.

Predicting the future is very difficult. As a historian I have trouble trying to predict the past.

History is the present day consideration of what went before.

We should never look down on those of the past and say they should have known better. What do you think they will be saving about us in the future? They’re going to be saying we should have known better.

Historians are prophets of the past, not of the future.

We have to learn from the past.

Hindsight is the historian's necessary vice.

The best prophet of the future is the past.

In my case, I write in the past because I'm not really part of the present. I have nothing valid to say about anything current, though I have something to say about what existed then.

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.

There is always something rather absurd about the past.

We are products of the past and its useful to remember that as we move into the future.

We have to go into the past to go further and further into the future.

The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.

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

Our understanding of the thought of the past is liable to be the more adequate, the less the historian is convinced of the superiority of his own point of view, or the more he is prepared to admit the possibility that he may have to learn something, not merely about the thinkers of the past, but from them.

One must be careful not to prejudge the past.

Presidents look back seeking both inspiration for the future and sanction for the moment

If you find great difficulty in trying to reckon with the future or even the present, I think it's intuitive to start that process by reckoning with the past.

It's always a fun game to go back and guess what long-past people would think.

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.

In terms of the past, I think we've all learned from the past. I think that's great wisdom.

A historian is often only a journalist facing backwards.

History does not usually make real sense until long afterward.

Appeals to the past are among the commonest of strategies in interpretations of the present.