It is significant that the nationalization of thought has proceded everywhere pari passu with the nationalization of industry.

It is significant that the nationalization of thought has proceded everywhere pari passu with the nationalization of industry.

The facts are really not at all like fish on the fishmonger's slab. They are like fish swimming about in a vast and sometimes inaccessible ocean; and what the historian catches will depend, partly on chance, but mainly on what part of the ocean he chooses to fish in and what tackle he chooses to use - these two factors being, of course, determined by the kind of fish he wants to catch. By and large, the historian will get the kind of facts he wants. History means interpretation.

The facts speak only when the historian calls on them: it is he who decides to which facts to give the floor, and in what order or context

Study the historian before you begin to study the facts.

Change is certain. Progress is not.

History is the long struggle of man, by exercise of his reason, to understand his environment and to act upon it. But the modern period has broadened the struggle in a revolutionary way. Man now seeks to understand, and act on, not only his environment, but himself; and this has added, so to speak, a new dimension to reason and a new dimension to history.