somewhere about the eighteenth century, history tacitly replaced religion as the school of public morals.
C. V. WedgwoodThe historian ought to be the humblest of men; he is faced a dozen times a day with the evidence of his own ignorance; he is perpetually confronted with his own humiliating inability to interpret his material correctly; he is, in a sense that no other writer is, in bondage to that material.
C. V. WedgwoodAn educated man should know everything about something, and something about everything.
C. V. WedgwoodAll normal human beings are interested in their past. Only when the interest becomes an obsession, overshadowing present and future conduct, is it a danger. In much the same way healthy nations are interested in their history, but a morbid preoccupation with past glories is a sign that something is wrong with the constitution of the State.
C. V. Wedgwood