Throughout the human experience people have read history because they felt that it was a pleasure and that it was in some way instructive. The profession of professor of history has taken it in a very different direction.
Donald KaganRead
Without history we are the prisoners of the accident of where and when we were born.
Interpretation
History shapes our identity and understanding of the world.
This quote by Donald Kagan emphasizes the importance of history in shaping our perspectives and identities. Without an understanding of our historical context, we risk being limited by the circumstances of our birth, lacking the insights that history provides about our culture, values, and the world around us. It suggests that knowledge of history can liberate us from ignorance and help us navigate our present and future more wisely.
In practice
In a lecture on the importance of historical education, one might quote Kagan to emphasize the necessity of understanding our past.
Throughout the human experience people have read history because they felt that it was a pleasure and that it was in some way instructive. The profession of professor of history has taken it in a very different direction.
I can see that you are a true historian because you really always ought to ask that question about anybody at a different place or a different time: What's the same and what's different?
War has been more common than peace, and extended periods of peace have been rare in a world divided into multiple states
I believe in goodness, mercy and charity. I believe in casting bread upon the waters.
It's tempting, when confronted by political malfeasance, to become so absorbed with its symptom that we give too little attention to treating its cause.
The history of thought, of knowledge, of philosophy, of literature seems to be seeking, and discovering, more and more discontinuities, whereas history itself appears to be abandoning the irruption of events in favor of stable structures.
Half the world does not know how the other half lives.
All rational action is in the first place individual action. Only the individual thinks. Only the individual reasons. Only the individual acts.
Without the Constitution and the Union, we could not have attained the result; but even these, are not the primary cause of our great prosperity. There is something back of these, entwining itself more closely about the human heart. That something, is the principle of "Liberty to all" the principle that clears the path for all-gives hope to all-and, by consequence, enterprize [sic], and industry to all.
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