Nations without a past are contradictions in terms. What makes a nation is the past, what justifies one nation against others is the past, and historians are the people who produce it.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
History shows that nations are more fragile than their citizens think. No nation in history has survived the ravages of time.
The study of history empowers nations and individuals with an ability to avoid errors of the past and lay foundations for victories in the future.
History is formed by the people, those who have power and those without power. Each one of us makes history.
Nations have always good reasons for being what they are, and the best of all is that they cannot be otherwise.
A nation is a society united by a delusion about its ancestry and by common hatred of its neighbours.
In every era, there are only one or two moments when nations come together and reach agreements that make history, because they change the course of history.
History is one of those marvelous and necessary illusions we have to deal with. It's one of the ways of dealing with our world with impossible generalities which we couldn't live without.
History is not everything, but it is a starting point. History is a clock that people use to tell their political and cultural time of day. It is a compass they use to find themselves on the map of human geography. It tells them where they are but, more importantly, what they must be.
There comes a time in the history of nations when their peoples must become fully reconciled to their past if they are to go forward with confidence to embrace their future.
History is an account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools.