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I claim for students of history that their study – if properly conducted – can strip the mind of illusions, leading them from heady abstraction back to men and women in their infinite diversity – warning them, by reference to actuality, against this or that ideology which oversimplifies the past under a single formula or promises the millenium the day after tomorrow.

— David C. Douglas

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More quotes by David C. Douglas

The search for wisdom in precedent flourished as if naturally among a people whom foreign observers at a later date have praised especially for its reliance upon tradition rather than upon those wide general theories which claim universal validity.

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A generation which ignores history has no past —and no future.

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History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.

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If we don’t care about our past we can’t have very much hope for our future.

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I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past, — so good night!

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: David C. Douglas (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.