It has been said that although God cannot alter the past, historians can --it is perhaps because they can be useful to Him in this respect that He tolerates their existence.

Samuel Butler
About This Quote

It has been said that although God cannot alter the past, historians can --it is perhaps because they can be useful to Him in this respect that He tolerates their existence. In other words, historians are not as important as they think they are. Historians may have a lot of facts about the past, but ultimately, these facts do not change anything. The facts might reveal a new truth about a person or event in the past, but the facts cannot change the past. This statement is a way of saying that historians can never change anything, and so they should not be so important to us.

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