" . . . each of us is born into a world that we did not make, and it is only with the greatest effort, and often at very great cost, that we are ever able to change that world for the better. Moral sensibilities are not static; they develop and deepen over time, and general moral progress is very slow. Part of the study of history involves a training of the imagination, learning to see historical actors as speaking and acting in their own times rather than ours; and learning to see even our heroes as an all-too-human mixture of admirable and unadmirable qualities, people like us who may, like us, be constrained by circumstances beyond their control . . . " Wilfred M. McClay in the article Rediscovering the Wisdom in American History as it appeared in Imprimis, a publication of Hillsdale College.
"Freedom is not free." U.S. Air Force Colonel Walter Hitchcock of New Mexico Military Institute; This quote is engraved into one wall at the Korean War Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.
"History. History. History. We must all read history, and write and publish and teach history better." David McCullough, born July 7, 1933) is an American author, narrator, historian, and lecturer.
"History is a pattern of timeless moments." Thomas Stearns Eliot (26 September 1888 – 4 January 1965) was a British essayist, publisher, playwright, literary and social critic, and "one of the twentieth century's major poets".
"History with its flickering lamp stumbles along the trail of the past, trying to reconstruct its scenes, to revive its echoes, and kindle with pale gleams the passion of former days." Winston Spencer Churchill, (30 November 1874 – 24 January 1965) was a British statesman who was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945 and again from 1951 to 1955. Churchill was also an officer in the British Army, a historian, a writer, and an artist. This statement was in a speech in the House of Commons, November 12, 1940
"How horrible, fantastic, incredible it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas masks here because of a quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing." Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, speaking about Germany's invasion of Czechoslovakia. The Last Lion - Visions of Glory 1874 - 1932
"It cultivates every faculty of the mind, enlarges sympathies, liberalizes thought and feeling, furnishes and approves the highest standards of character." Margaret Phelps, history teacher referring to the field of study of history
"Jennings’s (Paul Jennings) progress through life showcases the oppression at the heart of the American slave system. Jennings was an intelligent man forced to live in the service of others. He developed his talents and character in spite of the society into which he was born. It is proper to highlight his achievements, but it is also important to consider how much further he could have gone if slavery and white supremacy had not blighted his existence. His is a life to marvel at, but one that invites deep and clear-eyed consideration of America’s past." Annette Gordon-Reed; (born November 19, 1958, in Livingston, Texas) is an American historian and law professor.
"More painful even than the realization that his brief presidency would be forgotten was the thought that future generations would never know the man he had been." 20th USA President James A. Garfield
"Since we cannot read the literature of the future, we can at least read the literature of the past, and realize the powerful implicit challenge that this makes to the ultimate authority of the present. For sooner or later, the present will become the past, and the self-evident authority of its ideas will be eroded - unless that authority is grounded in the intrinsic excellence of those ideas, rather than their mere chronological location." author Allister McGrath writing in C.S. Lewis
"The longer you look back, the farther you can look forward. This is not a philosophical or political arguement - any oculist can tell you it is true." Winston Churchill, (30 November 1874 – 24 January 1965) was a British statesman who was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945 and again from 1951 to 1955. Churchill was also an officer in the British Army, a historian, a writer, and an artist.
"The only new thing in the world is the history you don't know." Harry S. Truman, (May 8, 1884 – December 26, 1972) was the 33rd President of the United States (1945–1953)
"The past is a foreign country: They do things differently there." Leslie Poles Hartley CBE (30 December 1895 – 13 December 1972), known as L. P. Hartley, was a British novelist and short story writer. (Thank you to friend Goody for sharing this.)
"The reading of old books enables us to avoid becoming passive captives of the Spirit of the Age by keeping 'the clean sea breeze captives of the centuries blowing through our minds.' " C.S. Lewis, (29 November 1898 – 22 November 1963) was a British novelist, poet, academic, medievalist, literary critic, essayist, lay theologian, broadcaster, lecturer, and Christian apologist.
"There is nothing in all the earth that you and I can do for the Dead. They are past our help and past our praise. We can add to them no glory, we can give to them no immortality. They do not need us, but forever and forever more we need them." 20th USA President James A. Garfield
"We must allow the text to interrogate and expand our experience. Rather than trying to get rid of a medieval knight's suit of armor so that he becomes just like us, we should try to find out what it is like to wear that armor." author Allister McGrath in C.S. Lewis
"We need intimate knowledge of the past. Not that the past has any magic about it, but because we cannot study the future, and yet need something to set against the present, to remind us that the basic assumptions have been quite different in different periods and that much which seems certain to the uneducated is merely temporary fashion." Clive Staples Lewis (29 November 1898 – 22 November 1963) was a British novelist, poet, academic, medievalist, literary critic, essayist, lay theologian, broadcaster, lecturer, and Christian apologist.
"We need to remember that this is generally how history happens. It is not like a Hollywood movie in which the background music swells and the crowd in the room applauds and leaps to its feet as the orator dispenses timeless words, and the camera pans the room full of smiling faces. In real history, the background music does not swell, the trumpets do not sound, and the carping critics often seem louder than the applause. The leader or the soldier has to wonder whether he is acting in vain, whether the criticisms of others are in fact true, whether time will judge him harshly, whether his sacrifice will count for anything. Few great leaders have felt this burden more completely than Lincoln." David Donald, Abraham Lincoln's biographer.
"With Garfield in the White House, the New York Times wrote, Southerners “felt, as they had not felt before for years, that the Government . . . was their Government, and that the chief magistrate of the country had an equal claim upon the loyal affection of the whole people." Written about 20th USA President James A. Garfield
"Why restrict your circle of acquaintances to only those who occupy the same stage we call the present?" David McCullough, (born July 7, 1933) is an American author, narrator, historian, and lecturer.
Return to Quotations for Daily Use Menu!
Return to SouthTillamookCounty Home Page!