A healthy vision of the future is not possible without an accurate knowledge of the past.
History offers us vicarious experience. It allows the youngest student to possess the ground equally with his elders; without a knowledge of history to give him a context for present events, he is at the mercy of every social misdiagnosis handed to him.
I like American history, so I was aware of the participants and a lot of it.
It is by no means certain that we advance our philosophical quest by reading Plato or Aristotle. It may increase our knowledge of history but not of the world.
No political party can possibly lead a great revolutionary movement to victory unless it possesses revolutionary theory and knowledge of history and has a profound grasp of the practical movement.
However rich we may become in knowledge of the deeper causes of historical results, we forgo all understanding of history if we forget this inner continuity,--i.e., the conscious intentions of the participants in history-making and their consciously known successes.
There's nothing sexier than a girl who's like, 'I know who FDR is, I know about the New Deal, I'm going to give you a new deal.' And then, over a period of years, she structures her sex acts in such a way that they save the economy.
