"Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtle; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend." Francis Bacon, 1561-1626, English philosopher, essayist, and statesman

"Since history has no properly scientific value, its only purpose is educative. And if historians neglect to educate the public, if they fail to interest it intelligently in the past, then all their historical learning is valueless except in so far as it educates themselves." George M. Trevelyan, 1876-1962, British historian

"The charm of history and its enigmatic lesson consist in the fact that, from age to age, nothing changes and yet everything is completely different." Aldous Huxley, 1894-1963, British writer, "The Devils of Loudun"

"What experience and history teach is this--that people and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it." Georg Hegel, 1770-1831, German philosopher

"The study of history is the best medicine for a sick mind; for in history you have a record of the infinite variety of human experience plainly set out for all to see; and in that record you can find yourself and your country both examples and warnings; fine things to take as models, base things rotten through and through, to avoid." Livy, 59 B.C.E.-C.E.17, Roman historian

"History is for human self-knowledge. Knowing yourself means knowing, first, what it is to be a person; secondly, knowing what it is to be the kind of person you are; and thirdly, knowing what it is to be the person you are and nobody else is. Knowing yourself means knowing what you can do; and since nobody knows what they can do until they try, the only clue to what man can do is what man has done. The value of history, then, is that it teaches us what man has done and thus what man is." Robin G. Collingwood, 1889-1943, British philosopher