History should be written as philosophy. – Voltaire

Revolutions are not made: they come. A revolution is as natural as an oak tree. It comes out of the past; its foundations are laid far back. – Wendell Phillips, Address, Anti-Slavery Society, 1852

No one can really know the life of his own day, let alone that of times long past. Always the historian sees as in a mirror darkly, the reds and the golds rendered drab by the shadows of time. – Earl R. Beck, On Teaching History in Colleges and Universities