The historian's rightful task is to distil experience as a medicinal warning for the future generations, not to distil a drug.

B.H. Liddell Hart
About This Quote

The historian's rightful task is to distil experience as a medicinal warning for the future generations, not to distil a drug. This quote from the late Sir Max Hastings sums up the duty of a history writer. To study history is to learn from past mistakes and to distill the lessons from those mistakes so that future generations will not repeat them.

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More Quotes By B.H. Liddell Hart
  1. The historian's rightful task is to distil experience as a medicinal warning for the future generations, not to distil a drug.
  2. In 1870, came the victory of the short-service troops of Prussia over the long-service troops of France, where conscription had but recently been reintroduced in a partial form and as a supplementary measure. That obvious contrast carried more weight into the world than all the...
  3. The history of ancient Greece showed that, in a democracy, emotion dominates reason to a greater extent than in any other political system, thus giving freer rein to the passions which sweep a state into war and prevent it getting out–at any point short of...
  4. Universal peace-time conscription was adopted by almost all countries as the basis of their military system. This ensured that wars would grow bigger in scale, longer in duration, and worse in effects. While conscription appeared democratic, it provided autocrats, hereditary or revolutionary, with more effective...
  5. ... throughout the ages, effective results in war have rarely been attained unless theapproach has had such indirectness as to ensure the opponent's unreadyness to meet it. The indirectness has usually been physical, and always psychological.
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