Cargill Gilston Knott Quotes

You can make the argument that there's no such thing as the past. Nobody lived in the past. They lived in the present. It is their present, not our present, and they don't know how it's going to come out. They weren't just like we are because they lived in that very different time. You can't understand them if you don't understand how they perceived reality.

It all depends on which side of the desk you're sitting on.

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.

The average student of any historical period invariably reads into his interpretation the intellectual, moral and social atmosphere that lies nearest to him. He cannot strip away the intervening time-content between himself and the period in question. It is the most difficult of all exercises of the imagination, and to most men, indeed, impossible, to realize that the same words, names, customs and institutions connote totally different actualities in different stages of historic evolution. People fail to conjure up the altered perspective, and the unfamiliar background on which men lived, thought and felt in another age.

If you think there is anything in theater that objectively exists without your point of view attached, you are wrong.

If the present tries to sit in judgment of the past, it will lose the future.

The more we see the founders as humans the more we can understand them.

The past was great no doubt, but I sincerely believe that the future will be more glorious still.

Don´t be unnecessarily burdened by the past. Go on closing the chapters that you have read; there is no need to go back again and again. And never judge anything of the past from the new perspective that is arriving, because the new is new, incomparably new and the old was right in its own context, and the new is right in its own context.

I expressed skepticism, in the first chapter, about the utility of time machines in historical research. I especially advised against graduate students relying on them, because of the limited perspective you tend to get from being plunked down in some particular part of the past, and the danger of not getting back in time for your orals.

Those who compare the age in which their lot has fallen with a golden age which exists only in imagination, may talk of degeneracy and decay; but no man who is correctly informed as to the past, will be disposed to take a morose or desponding view of the present.

It is not incumbent on the world to conform to your vision of change. It is up to you to explain the future in terms that those living in the past and present can follow.

The front aspect of great thoughts can only be enjoyed by those who stand on the side whence they arrive.

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

America, this is our moment. This is our time. Our time to turn the page on the policies of the past. Our time to bring new energy and new ideas to the challenges we face. Our time to offer a new direction for the country we love.

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.

To view current events as a historian is to account for all perspectives, even those of your enemy

How you see where you are always depends on where you've been.

Being is seeing in the human dimension.

America, this is our moment. This is our time. Our time to turn the page of the policies of the past.

The present changes the past. Looking back you do not find what you left behind.

You can't make sense of the present unless a part of you lives in the past.

We must be willing to change chairs if we want to grow. There is no permanent compatibility between a chair and a person. And there is no one right chair. What is right at one stage may be restricting at another or too soft. During the passage from one stage to another, we will be between two chairs. Wobbling no doubt, but developing.

As the Chinese will tell you, history depends on your point of view.

If we read the words and attitudes of the past through the pompous "wisdom" of the considered moral judgments of the present, we will find nothing but error.