[T]hat is the triumph of history – truth absolute is not at hand; the original with which to match the copy does not exist. – Jacques Barzun, Clio and the Doctors

A mind devoid of prepossessions is likely to be devoid of all mental furniture. And the historian who thinks that he can clean his mind as he would a slate with a wet sponge, is ignorant of the simplest facts of mental life. – Allen Johnson, The Historian and Historical Evidence

The library is the temple of learning, and learning has liberated more people than all the wars in history. – Carl T. Rowan

It has become too easy to see that the luckless men of the past lived by mistakes, even absurd beliefs, so we may well fail in a decent respect for them, and forget that historians of the future will point out that we too lived by myths. – Herbert J. Muller, Freedom in the Western World