Presentism. Yeah, this professor is right. It's just a way to congratulate yourself about being better than George Washington, because you have a gay friend and he didn't. But if he was alive today he would too. And if you were alive then you wouldn't.
He criticized the phenomenon known as presentism, which means judging everyone in the past by the standards of the present. It's the belief that people who lived a hundred or five hundred or a thousand years ago really should have known better. Which is so stupid. It's like getting mad at yourself for not knowing what you know now when you were 10. Stupid me spending all that time raising sea monkeys...
But its also true that much of history is indisputably factual because we have artifacts and coins and birth records and archaeology. And somebody in Mesopotamia kept a record of how much grain they ate. It's not all up in the air to change or delete or make up based on what makes you feel better today.
Who doesn't have moments from your past that make you cringe? Who hasn't said "I can't believe I said that. I can't believe I wore that. I can't believe I thought that. I can't believe I did that." You ate dirt. You wanted to be a Ghostbuster. You shoplifted gum. You tried to be a white break dancer. You wanted marry Scott Baio.
The habits of a vigorous mind are formed in contending with difficulties.
I do not mean to say, that the scenes of the revolution are now or ever will be entirely forgotten; but that like every thing else, they must fade upon the memory of the world, and grow more and more dim by the lapse of time.... At the close of the struggle, nearly every adult male had been a participator in some of its scenes. The consequence was, that of those scenes, in the form of a husband, a father, a son or a brother, a living history was to be found in every family.... But those histories are gone. They can be read no more forever. They were a fortress of strength; but, what invading foemen could never do, the silent artillery of time has done; the leveling of its walls
To be unacquainted with what has passed in the world, before we came into it ourselves, is to be always children. For what is the age of a single mortal, unless it is connected, by the aid of History, with the times of our ancestors?
A man who has lived in many places is not likely to be deceived by the local errors of his native village: the scholar has lived in many times and is therefore in some degree immune from the great cataract of nonsense that pours from the press and the microphone of his own age.
Another reason why news stories are unsuited to communicate historical understanding is that their format is such that they invariably report such facts out of context. An individual historical fact has meaning only in relation to other facts. Outside that context, a single fact is almost certain to convey an erroneous impression.
We recognize that our forebears were human. They doubtless made mistakes...But the mistakes were minor, when compared with the marvelous work which they accomplished. To highlight the mistakes and gloss over the greater good is to draw a caricature. Caricatures are amusing, but they are often ugly and dishonest. A man may have a blemish on his cheek and still have a face of beauty and strength, but if the blemish is emphasized unduly in relation to his other features, the portrait is lacking in integrity...
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...
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.
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.
If you came in to a movie in the last 15 minutes would you have a clue as to what is going on you're in the last 15 minutes of history hours of history have taken place before you you can't possibly understand the movie if you don't know what happened before the last 15 minutes it's as simple literally as simple as that the ignorance is astonishing.
I find history fascinating. There's a lot of incredible things that have been done, good and bad, that they help you understand the nature of civilization and individuals.
History is written by the victors. Well, yes, but not if your enemies are still alive and have a lot of time on their hands to edit Wikipedia.
Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire.
We celebrate the past to awaken the future.
All the entertainment and talk of history is nothing almost but fighting and killing: and the honour and renown that is bestowed on conquerers (who for the most part are but the great butchers of mankind) farther mislead growing youth, who by this means come to think slaughter the laudible business of mankind, and the most heroick of virtues. By these steps unnatural cruelty is planted in us; and what humanity abhors, custom reconciles and recommends to us, by laying it in the way to honour. Thus, by fashioning and opinion, that comes to be a pleasure, which in itself neither is, nor can be any.
There is power in understanding the journey of others to help create your own.
To respond with patience means that we recognize that revealed truth often comes slowly, line upon line, and so we must be patient with those prophets from the past who did not have the greater light and knowledge that God has revealed to us. They were still waiting and praying for what we have already received. In addition, the scriptures teach that false cultural traditions can actually take away light and give us spiritual blind spots that make it difficult to perceive a cultural evil all around us (D&C 93:39). Rather than be offended by this, we should be patient with them and grateful for the light that we have. Otherwise it is like standing on your dad’s shoulders and then criticizing him for not being able to see as far as you can.
Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you.
Anybody can make history. Only a great man can write it.
Every great man nowadays has his disciples, and it is always Judas who writes the biography.
The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it.
Memory is the diary that we all carry about with us.
No man is rich enough to buy back his own past.
The human family has not yet come out of the woods. We were more barbarian, we are still barbarians. Sometimes in the past we shot ahead, in certain ways, ahead of where we are now. We gave flashes of what is possible in man. We have yet as a body to come up to the art of living.
Once you believe that any figure in history who once owned slaves is illegitimate and should be erased, it’s hard to take our founding documents very seriously. How can you accept a Bill of Rights when it was written by slave owners? You can’t. Which is why so many on the left don’t — and ignore the First and Second Amendments, among many others. That was the point we were trying to make. You may disagree but it didn’t seem crazy or mean spirited.
...man considers only the stubble field of transitoriness and overlooks the full granaries of the past wherein he had salvaged once and for all his deeds...
To be sure, people tend to see only the stubble fields of transitoriness but overlook and forget the full granaries of the past into which they have brought the harvest of their lives: the deeds done, the loves loved, and last but not least, the sufferings they have gone through with courage and dignity.
We should be considerate to the living; to the dead we owe only the truth.
Indeed, history is nothing more than a tableau of crimes and misfortunes.
Ancient histories, as one of our wits has said, are but fables that have been agreed upon.
You Don't rewrite history by taking down statues.
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
If you want to make history, you have to do historic things.
We may not make history but we are made by history.
The more you know about past , the better prepared you are for the future.
Presentism. Yeah, this professor is right. It's just a way to congratulate yourself about being better than George Washington, because you have a gay friend and he didn't. But if he was alive today he would too. And if you were alive then you wouldn't. 
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