A recorded past is no more than a bygone present composed of the footprints made by human beings actually going somewhere but not knowing (in any extended sense), and certainly not revealing to us, how, they came to be afoot on these particular journeys. – Michael Oakeshott, On History

To be Jewish is to be specifically identified with a history. And if youre not aware of that when youre a child, the whole tradition is lost. – Joyce Carol Oates

A history in which every particular incident may be true may on the whole be false. – Thomas Babington Macaulay