Resources

We are pleased to present Quotes on History, selected Links, and selected Documents, including “Delving into History:  Using Primary Sources to Understand the Past.”

Quotes on History:

“The past is never dead; it isn’t even past.”
— William Faulkner in Requiem for a Nun

“The principal office of history I take to be this: to prevent virtuous actions from being forgotten, and that evil words and deeds should fear an infamous reputation with posterity,”
— Tacitus, Annales (III, 65)

“The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.”
— Winston Churchill

“History is not another name for the past, as many people imply. It is the name for stories about the past.”
— A.J.P. Taylor

“History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. History is who we are and why we are the way we are.”
— David McCullough, address at Wesleyan University, June 3, 1984

“. . . it is believed that the most effectual means of preventing this [tyranny] would be, to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large, and more especially to give them knowledge of those facts, which history exhibiteth, that, possessed thereby of the experience of other ages and countries, they may be enabled to know ambition under all its shapes, and prompt to exert their natural powers to defeat its purposes.”
— Thomas Jefferson, A Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge, Public Papers, University of Virginia Library

History Links:

National Archives http://www.archives.gov/

Library of Congress http://www.loc.gov/index.html

Documents:

Delving into History:  Using Primary Sources to Understand the Past.  Feel free to use and reprint this document with attribution.