We have need of history in its entirety, not to fall back into it, but to see if we can escape from it. – Jose Ortega y Gasset

The writing of histories – as Goethe once noted – is one way of getting rid of the weight of the past…. The writing of history liberates us from history. – Benedetto Croce, History as the Story of Liberty

If we could read the secret history of our enemies we should find in each mans life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility. – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Without philosophy, history seems to me to be deaf and dumb. – Ferdinand Baur, Symbolik und Mythologic