Reason creates science; sentiments and creeds shape history.
History Quotes
Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.
Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime; therefore, we must be saved by hope. Nothing true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore, we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore, we are saved by love.
The so-called lessons of history are for the most part the rationalizations of the victors. History is written by the survivors.
History does nothing, possesses no enormous wealth, fights no battles. It is rather man, the real, living man, who does everything, possesses, fights. It is not History, as if she were a person apart, who uses men as a means to work out her purposes, but history itself is nothing but the activity of men […]
The historian sees backward. In the end he also believes backward.
History is the short trudge from Adam to atom.
History is the story of events, with praise or blame.
Men after death are understood worse than men of the present, but heard better.
The most important events in every age never reach the history books.
