One of the deepest impulses in man is the impulse to record, – to scratch a drawing on a tusk or keep a diary, to collect sagas and heap cairns. This instinct as to the enduring value of the past is, one might say, the very basis of civilization. – John Jay Chapman, Memories and Milestones

The historian has before him a jigsaw puzzle from which many pieces have disappeared. These gaps can be filled only by his imagination. – Gaetano Salvemini, Historian and Scientist

The history of the world shows that peoples and societies do not have to pass through a fixed series of stages in the course of development. – Aung San Suu Kyi