Henry David Thoreau Quotes

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.

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

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

History is the open Bible: we historians are not priests to expound it infallibly: our function is to teach people to read it and to reflect upon it for themselves.

We read the past by the light of the present, and the forms vary as the shadows fall, or as the point of vision alters.

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.

Whatever can be noted historically can be found within history.

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.

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

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.

I think history is continuous. It doesn't begin or end on Pearl Harbor Day or the day Lyndon Johnson withdraws from the presidency or on 9/11. You have to learn from the past but not be imprisoned by it. You need to take counsel of history but never be imprisoned by it.

While historians may go on attempting grand, sweeping and defining narratives, they work in a time when readers know that another narrative always lies in wait, and that the more intelligent an historian is, the more tentative and self-scrutinizing the tone.

It's very important to always put things in their historical contexts. It teaches important lessons about the country in question.

While we read history we make history.

In analyzing history do not be too profound, for often the causes are quite superficial.

History is too serious to be left to historians.

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

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.

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.

History courses made up of all facts and no interpretation are guaranteed to put kids to sleep…. History comes alive when viewed as a patterned story open to ongoing debate.

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

We cannot do justice to the deeds of former times if we do not in some degree remove ourselves from the circumstances in which we stand and substitute those by which the real actors were surrounded.

It's hard to understand a moment in history when you are in 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.