Americans treat history like a cookbook. Whenever they are uncertain what to do next, they turn to history and look up the proper recipe, invariably designated "the lesson of history.
History is a better guide than good intentions.
History is the depository of great actions, the witness of what is past, the example and instructor of the present, and monitor to the future.
It is history that teaches us to hope.
If history is any guide at all, it seems to me to suggest that there is a final theory. In this century we have seen a convergence of the arrows of explanation, like the convergence of meridians toward the North Pole.
A hundred thousand men were led By one calf near three centuries dead; They followed still his crooked way And lost a hundred years a day; For thus such reverence is lent To well established precedent.
Lessons taught but never learned, all around us anger burns. Guide the future by the past. Long ago the mould was cast.
The task of the educator is to make the child's spirit pass again where its forefathers have gone, moving rapidly through certain stages but suppressing none of them. In this regard, the history of science must be our guide.
History is the land-mark by which we are directed into the true course of life.
