History

What is History?

"The only thing that's new is the history you haven't learned yet." -- Harry S. Truman

• "To history has been assigned the office of judging the past, of instructing the present for the benefit of future ages."  -- Leopold von Ranke
• "The man who does not study history is condemned to repeat it." -- Georges Santayana
• "That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach." -- Aldous Huxley
• "Women are the only exploited group in history to have been idealized into powerlessness." -- Erica Jong
• "The history of liberty is a history of resistance." -- Nadia Boulanger
• "All human histories are provisional; none will have the last word. ...[A] democratic practice of history --one in which an ever-growing chorus of voices is heard-- will depend upon objectivity, defined anew as a commitment to honest investigation, open process of research, and engaged public discussions of the meaning of historical facts." -- Dr. Joyce Appleby

Well, perhaps there is an exception:

"The Holocaust was an obscene period in our nation's history...this century's history.... We all lived in this century. I didn't live in this century." Dan Quayle