Reading History Quotes

“It was the encounter between the printed page and the oral culture, of which he was one embodiment, that led Menocchio to formulate -first for himsel, later for himself, later for his fellow villagers, and finally for the judges- the "opinions ... (that) came out of his head.”
― Carlo Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller

“History is the story of what led up to now. It is the present that interests us—that and the future. The future will be partly determined by the present. Thus, you can learn something about the future, too, from a historian, even from one who like Thucydides lived more than two thousand years ago. Let us sum up these two suggestions for reading history. The first is: if you can, read more than one history of an event or period that interests you. The second is: read a history not only to learn what really happened at a particular time and place in the past, but also to learn the way men act in all times and places, especially now.
[How to Read a Book (1972), P. 236]”
― Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren