Quotes About Understanding

Land. If you understand nothing else about the history of Indians in North America, you need to understand that the question that really matters is the question of land.

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

We are always remaking history. Our memory is always an interpretive reconstruction of the past, so is perspective.

If you would understand anything, observe its beginning and its development

There is room in history for all of us.

The lesson of history is rarely learned by the actors themselves.

History does not belong to us; we belong to it.

History is a Rorschach test, people. What you see when you look at it tells you as much about yourself as it does about the past.

The history of thought, and therefore all history, is the re-enactment of past thought in the historian's own mind.

We learn from history as much as a rabbit learns from an experiment that's performed upon it.

Those who do not know history will forever remain children

If you learn music, you'll learn history. If you learn music, you'll learn mathematics. If you learn music, you'll learn most all there is to learn.

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.

A mere collector of supposed facts is as useful as a collector of matchboxes.

If you don't understand history, you will not be able to deal with today's issues.

History does not usually make real sense until long afterward.

History is lived forwards but it is written in retrospect. We know the end before we consider the beginning and we can never wholly recapture what it was to know the beginning only.

History viewed from the inside is always a dark, digestive mess, far different from the easily recognizable cow viewed from afar by historians.

We always admire the other person more after we've tried to do his job.

If you don't know history, then you don't know anything. You are a leaf that doesn't know it is part of a tree.

I think one of the most fascinating things you can do after you learn about your own people is to study something about the history and culture of other people.

But history is neither watchmaking nor cabinet construction. It is an endeavor toward better understanding.

As a student of history, I also know civilization's debt to Islam.

The more abstract the truth you wish to teach, the more must you allure the senses to it.