Good history is good story-telling. And good story-telling demands empathy; it requires understanding different actors, differing motivations, competing goals.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of empathy in understanding history through storytelling.
Ben Sasse suggests that history is best understood as a narrative that requires a storyteller's ability to connect with diverse perspectives. Good storytelling not only recounts events but also necessitates empathy to appreciate the various motivations and conflicts of the individuals involved.
In practice
In a classroom discussion about historical events, this quote can highlight the importance of understanding different perspectives.
Among the responsibilities of each citizen in a participatory democracy is keeping ourselves sufficiently informed so that we can participate effectively, argue our positions honorably, and hopefully, forge sufficient consensus to understand each other and then to govern.
Becoming a reader grows our horizons, our appetite for the good, the true and the beautiful, and our empathy.
The health of our republic depends on shared principles like the First Amendment, but it is also built on the Teddy Roosevelt-like vigor of its citizens and local self-reliance.
Being stuck in adolescence - that's a hell. 'Peter Pan' is a dystopia, and we forget that. Neverland is a bad place to be.
Rising political tribalism, shamelessly exaggerating our opponents' claims or behavior, is leaving us vulnerable: No one loves America's internal fighting - and our increasingly siloed news consumption - more than Vladimir Putin.
I don't think that our Founders would believe that America could long prosper if the people were not readers.
Math education has changed over the years. In the 19th century, they taught spherical trigonometry because one of the biggest applications of mathematics was navigating the ocean. This is no longer so relevant.
Excellent teachers showered on to us like meteors: Biology teachers holding up human brains, English teachers inspiring us with a personal ideological fierceness about Tolstoy and Plato, Art teachers leading us through the slums of Boston, then back to the easel to hurl public school gouache with social awareness and fury.
When you're a student of poetry, you're lucky if you don't realize how untalented you are until you get a little better. Otherwise, you would just stop.
But without doubts, without a standpoint reached through questionings, human beings can't acquire knowledge.
...the reader who plucks a book from her shelf only once is as deprived as the listener who, after attending a single performance of a Beethoven symphony, never hears it again.
The most important practical lesson than can be given to nurses is to teach them what to observe.
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