“And long after the history of all the big things that make the front pages are forgotten, what God has done through you and a few people will be history.”

“Things just happen, one after another. They don't care who knows. But history... ah, history is different. History has to be observed. Otherwise it's not history. It's just... well, things happening one after another.”

“It is my conviction that when events are forgotten, buried in the cellar of the page, they are no longer even history.”

“History is for human self-knowledge…the only clue to what man can do is what man has done. The value of history, then, is that it teaches us what man has done and thus what man is.”

“Well behaved people and dreamers seldom make history. In fact, history has no place for such people.”

“Wars make history seem deceptively simple. They provide clear turning points, easy distinctions.: before and after, winner and loser, right and wrong. True history, the past, is not like that. It isn't flat or linear. It has no outline. It is slippery, like liquid; infinite and unknowable, like space. And it is changeable: just when you think you see a pattern, perspective shifts, an alternate version is proffered, a long-forgotten memory resurfaces.”