For what is history, but… huge libel on human nature, to which we industriously add page after page, volume after volume, as if we were holding up a monument to the honor, rather than the infamy of our species. – Washington Irving, History of New York

History is the action and reaction of these two, nature and thought – two boys pushing each other on the curbstone of the pavement. – Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Conduct of Life: Fate