We should never look down on those people and say that they should have known better. What do you think they’re going to be saying about us in the future? They’re going to be saying we should have known better.
"Climb the mountain so you can see the world, not so the world can see you."
They talk about what a difficult, dangerous time we live in. And it is very difficult, very dangerous and very uncertain. But so it has always been. And this nation of ours has been through darker times. And if you don’t know that—as so many who broadcast the news and subject us to their opinions in the press don’t seem to know—that’s because we’re failing in our understanding of history.
Family, teachers, friends, rivals, competitors—they’ve all shaped us. And so too have people we’ve never met, never known, because they lived long before us. They have shaped us too—the people who composed the symphonies that move us, the painters, the poets, those who have written the great literature in our language.
We are raising a generation of young Americans who are by-and-large historically illiterate. And it’s not their fault.
We have to value what our forebears—and not just in the 18th century, but our own parents and grandparents—did for us, or we’re not going to take it very seriously, and it can slip away. If you don’t care about it—if you’ve inherited some great work of art that is worth a fortune and you don’t know that it’s worth a fortune, you don’t even know that it’s a great work of art and you’re not interested in it—you’re going to lose it.
...attitudes aren’t taught, they’re caught
The textbooks are dreary, they’re done by committee, they’re often hilariously politically correct and they’re not doing any good.
We’ve got to teach history and nurture history and encourage history because it’s an antidote to the hubris of the present...