You have to know your past if you want to create a future.

To know your future you must know your past

To understand what happens now one must find the cause, which may be very long ago in its beginning, but is surely there, and therefore a knowledge of history as detailed as possible is essential if we are to comprehend the present and be prepared for the future.

If you want the present to be different from the past, study the past.

If you want to understand today, you have to search yesterday.

History belongs to the past, but understanding it is the duty of the present

Study the past if you would define the future.

The past requires not only that we study it and know it, but also that we learn its lessons - for this simple reason: evil is not just a thing of the past.

I do not look to history to absolve my country of the need to do things right today. Rather I seek to understand the wrongs of yesterday, both to grasp what has brought us to our present reality and to understand the past for itself. The past is not necessarily a guide to the future, but it does partly help explain the present. One cannot, as I have written elsewhere, take revenge upon history; history is its own revenge.

The past is not necessarily a guide to the future, but it does partly help explain the present.

History was like an old house at night. With all the lamps lit. And ancestor whispering inside. To understand history, we have to go inside and listen to what they're saying. And look at the books and the pictures on the wall. And smell the smells.

I do not look to history to absolve my country of the need to do things right today. I seek to understand the wrongs of yesterday, both to grasp what has brought us to our present reality and to understand the past for itself.

To know reality you have to know beyond knowing.

To understand the man you have to know what was happening in the world when he was twenty.