Laurence Tribe Quotes

Writing history is writing the soul of the past...

I think that America has an obsession with history, really.

An important part of what the state does is preserving its history.

I don't think you should ever run from history. You should learn from it and embrace it.

History is a battleground... but it has always been the case. Remembering is a radical act. Choosing what is important and what belongs in the overstuffed metaphorical dustbin of history is of vital importance.

We have a national memory in this country of about 7 minutes.

No people can live in the past - not even in its own past. But if it no longer has a link with its history, it must of necessity perish. Persia, crowded with hardship and glory, ordeals and hopes. With the help of the Almighty, the lessons of the past constitute the best guide for the citizens of the future.

There is a difference between remembrance of history and reverence of it.

I don't think you can erase history.

If history is really relevant in today's world, the proposition doesn't command much respect. Perhaps the past is a different country, but if so no one much wants to travel there.

The very concept of history implies the scholar and the reader. Without a generation of civilized people to study history, to preserve its records, to absorb its lessons and relate them to its own problems, history, too, would lose its meaning.

I think documentaries are the greatest way to educate an entire generation that doesn't often look back to learn anything about the history that provided a safe haven for so many of us today.

I think history is collective memories. In writing, I'm using my own memory, and I'm using my collective memory.

An accurate knowledge of the past of a country is necessary for everyone who would understand its present, and who desires to judge of its future.

History is the interpretation of the significance that the past has for us.

I believe that patterns tend to repeat themselves and there are connections between the past and the present. There is the old proverb that reads, 'You can't know where you're going if you don't know where you've been'. For me, history is like that. When you take history and combine it with myth, then you get mystery.

History is nothing but gossip about the past, with the hope that it might be true.

There are moments in history that people should be reminded of.

I really feel sorry for kids who aren't interested in history - recent history, either, because it is this that made us what we are.

It may be enough to study history in all its nuance and ambiguity for its own sake. But there is no country free of the need to find new ways of reading the past as an inspiring way of thinking about everything else, including the present.

One cannot and must not try to erase the past merely because it does not fit the present.

We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and the future.

The way you 'take history' is also a way of 'making history.'

History is neither a political fable in which all the brothers are valiant and all the sisters virtuous, nor is it a tabloid expose, full of crimes and follies, signifying nothing but victimization. There is, I must admit, a caustic delight in unveiling the frailties of our Jeffersons and our Lincolns, but the delight turns malevolent when it serves only to strip the American past of anything remarkable or exceptional, or when it demeans or discourages civic engagement and confidence.

History isn’t just what happened before we came on the scene. We are a part of history..