Jews have a special relationship to books, and the Haggadah has been translated more widely, and reprinted more often, than any other Jewish book. It is not a work of history or philosophy, not a prayer book, users manual, timeline, poem or palimpsest – and yet it is all these things. – Jonathan Safran Foer

All that the historians give us are little oases in the desert of time, and we linger fondly in these, forgetting the vast tracks between one and another that were trodden by the weary generations of men. – John Alfred Spender, The Comments of Bagshot

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