Harvard Guide to American History. The surroundings that are the context of any man's life are an integral part of it, and history never reveals them in full. All it reveals are clues for guessing what the life in its context actually was - clues that are colored by the subjectivity of whoever initially provided them, and colored again by the subjectivity of whoever interprets them. For every generation is in a zone of imperfect visibility as far as the past is concerned. It is as if we are swimmers in the hollow of the historical wave, not until we reach the crest of the next wave can we look back and see clearly what went on before.
History is an inexhaustible fund of entertainment and instruction.
The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living. He was struck suddenly by the illuminating idea that perhaps it was not that it was impossible for him to write a history, but that History Itself Was Impossible. The past is not dead.