We know a history so that we can learn from it. We learn our history because we understand the sacrifices that were made before, so that when we make sacrifices we understand we're doing it on behalf of future generations. There’s a proverb that says, “We have not inherited this land from our forebears, we have borrowed it from our children.” In other words, we study the past so it can guide us into the future, and inspire us to do better.

If you want the present to be different from the past, study the past.

We must study and reclaim our past so that we can move forward; so we understand why and how we came to be who we are, and where we are going.

You have to know the past to understand the present.

We learn in the past, but we are not the result of that. We suffered in the past, loved in the past, cried and laughed in the past, but that’s of no use to the present. The present has its challenges, its good and bad side. We can neither blame nor be grateful to the past for what is happening now. Each new experience of love has nothing whatsoever to do with past experiences. It’s always new.

We need the courage to learn from our past and not live in it.

If we want to understand the past we must do so on its own terms, and disregard the future of that past, but if we want to understand the present we better not disregard the past steps that were essential for getting to the present. This is of importance especially for those of us engaged in trying to push ahead the scientific path of discovery today. We are not much interested in what scientists did wrong, there is too much of that. We are interested in what they did right, because we are trying to copy them in this, not in that.

I do not look to history to absolve my country of the need to do things right today. Rather I seek to understand the wrongs of yesterday, both to grasp what has brought us to our present reality and to understand the past for itself. The past is not necessarily a guide to the future, but it does partly help explain the present. One cannot, as I have written elsewhere, take revenge upon history; history is its own revenge.

I do not look to history to absolve my country of the need to do things right today. I seek to understand the wrongs of yesterday, both to grasp what has brought us to our present reality and to understand the past for itself.

Let us study things that are no more. It is necessary to understand them, if only to avoid them.

It would be well if, in studying the past, we could always bear in mind the problems of the present, and go to that past to seek large views of what is of lasting importance to the human race.

To appreciate the present, one must have a knowledge of the past…to know where we go, we must know from where we came…

He who does not know his past cannot make the best of his present and future, for it is from the past that we learn.

The essence of studying history is that, as best we can, we try to wear the shoes and put on the spectacles worn by people of the past. We try to see the obstacles and dilemmas they struggled against or evaded. We also hope that the future will try to understand why we made blunders, and learn from failures and achievements of our era.