“The study of history is useful to the historian by teaching him his ignorance of women.”

“Hardly a pure science, history is closer to animal husbandry than it is to mathematics in that it involves selective breeding. The principal difference between the husbandryman and the historian is that the former breeds sheep or cows or such and the latter breeds (assumed) facts. The husbandryman uses his skills to enrich the future, the historian uses his to enrich the past. Both are usually up to their ankles in bullshit.”

“Study the historian before you begin to study the facts.”

“What history is not biased? Show me a historian, a real historian who is not biased!...History is never objective.”

“So, then, the best of the historian is subject to the poet; for whatsoever action or faction, whatsoever counsel, policy, or war-stratagem the historian is bound to recite, that may the poet, if he list, with his imitation make his own, beautifying it both for further teaching and more delighting, as it pleaseth him; having all, from Dante’s Heaven to his Hell, under the authority of his pen.”

“The role of the Filipino historian must be the role of all historians. There is, of course, [Filipino history], but as rule, the role of the historian is to tell the truth-- in so far as documents are concerned.”