History (Repost)

Stillness at Shiloh – Morris

Autumn trees swept with dawn
Look as if they’ve been lacquered,
Rooted around an old battlefield.
The mists linger here like ghosts.

There are still places where you can walk and feel a profound gloom. Such is the case with old battlefields. People died there. The force of their determination still resonates.

You can find such places in every country. Often no one builds anything there, even when land is dear. We say that we do not want to forget our dead. We say that there should be a memorial. Others say that the disturbance there is so great that the living cannot abide with the dead.

History is essential to our understanding of the present. Unless we are conscious of the way in which we came to this point in time as a people, then we shall never fully be able to plan the present and the future. We need to know what roots are still alive. We need to know how things came to be so that we can project from here. We also need to know the failures of the past so that we can avoid repeating them.

History is not always glorious. Sometimes our history is melancholy. We must accept that. This life is terrible and people do terrible things to each other. If we are to live for the sake of the good and strong, then we should have as much of a background as possible.

Deng Ming Tao, 365 Tao

“Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it”
— George Santayana

“History doesn’t repeat itself – at best it sometimes rhymes” — Mark Twain

“People who make history know nothing about history. You can see that in the sort of history they make” — G. K. Chesterton

“History deals mainly with captains and kings, gods and prophets, exploiters and despoilers, not with useful men” — Henry Louis Mencken

“Remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible but in the end, they always fall — think of it, ALWAYS.”– Mahatma Gandhi

“One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say” — Will Durant

“Computers have enabled people to make more mistakes faster than almost any invention in history, with the possible exception of tequila and hand guns”
— Carl Gundlach

“Isn’t history ultimately the result of our fear of boredom?”
— Emile M. Cioran

My son told me yesterday at lunch what he had learned from studying history. He said, “I want to make sure that when they put down one of those terrible things that happens, my name isn’t next to it”.

Heh. I done good raising this one…