A country which ignores its legal history is like the captain of a vessel at sea who neglects periodically to take his latitudinal and longitudinal position in order to be sure that he is on his true course. – Cantor, "The Writ of Habeas Corpus: Early American Origins and Development," in Freedom and Reform: Essays in Honor of Henry Steele Commager 55 (H. Hyman and L. Levy ed. 1967).
[N]o free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people, but by a firm adherence to justice . . . and by frequent recurrence to fundamental principles. – Va. Bill of Rights §15 (June 12, 1776)
[N]o man who is correctly informed as to the past will be disposed to take a morose or desponding view of the present. – T. Macaulay, The History of England 52 (H. Trevor-Roper ed. 1982).
A lawyer without history or literature is a mechanic, a mere working mason; if he possesses some knowledge of these, he may venture to call himself an architect. – Sir Walter Scott, Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, chapter 37 (1892).
How many and how great are the benefits which are wont to accrue to states through History, which transmits to future generations the memory of those who have gone before and resists the steady effort of time to bury events in oblivion. . . . Wherefore our concern must be solely this-that all the deeds of the past shall be clearly set forth, and by what man, whosoever he might be, they were wrought . . . . Indeed it is through this very service that many men of later times strive after virtue by emulating the honors of those who have preceded them and . . . are quite likely to shun the basest practices. – Procopius, On Buildings, quoted in Herrin, "The Byzantine Secrets of Procopius," History Today, p. 36 (Aug. 1988).
Procopius of Caesarea has written the history of the wars which Justinian, the Roman Emperor, waged against barbarians in the East and West, just as each happened, that great deeds might not go unrecorded and that the vast progression of time might not overwhelm them, consign them to oblivion, and wipe them wholly from sight-deeds whose record he thought would be something great and highly beneficial both to the present generation and to those to come, if ever time should place men in the same kind of crisis again. For the example of a similar story can bestow benefits on those who are destined in future to go to war and take part in other kinds of contests, by revealing how the struggle went for earlier contenders, and by offering some idea of what outcome the present situation will probably have, at least for those who plan most wisely. – Procopius, History of the Wars, Secret History, and Buildings 3 (A. Cameron ed. & transl. 1967) (quoting Book I, Chap. 1, of History of the Wars).
The poetry of history lies in the quasi-miraculous fact that once, on this familiar spot of ground, walked other men and women, as actual as we are today, thinking their own thoughts, swayed by their own passion, but now all gone, one generation vanishing after another, gone as utterly as we ourselves shall shortly be gone like ghosts at cock-crow. – George Macaulay Trevelyn (1876-1962), quoted in A. Palmer and V. Palmer, A Dictionary of Historical Quotations 253 (1985).
[The historian] will give the best interpretation who, having discovered and weighed all the important evidence available, has the largest grasp of intellect, the warmest human sympathy, the highest imaginative powers. – George Macaulay Trevelyn (1876-1962), quoted in A. Palmer and V. Palmer, A Dictionary of Historical Quotations 253 (1985).
Truth is the criterion of historical study; but its impelling motive is poetic. – George Macaulay Trevelyn (1876-1962), quoted in A. Palmer and V. Palmer, A Dictionary of Historical Quotations 253 (1985).
I am perfectly lost in wonder when I think of this Revolution. To us, that knew it, it looks like a dream, but to posterity it must seem a romance . . . that all the politics of several last years past should be unraveled in three months. – A Dialogue Between Dick and Tom (1689), quoted in Melinda Zook, Radical Whigs and Conspiratorial Politics in Late Stuart England 173 (1999).
I question if in all the histories of empire there is one instance of so bloodless a Revolution as that in England in 1688, wherein Whigs, Tories, princes, prelates, nobles, clergy, common people, and a standing army were unanimous. To have seen all of England of one mind is to have lived at a very particular juncture. – W. A. Speck, Reluctant Revolutionaries: Englishmen and the Revolution of 1688 240 (1988) (quoting a contemporary account).
I cannot forbear remarking, how wonderfully this thing succeeded in opposition to so many visible and apparent accidents, any one whereof had they happened the whole design must certainly have miscarried. – W. A. Speck, Reluctant Revolutionaries: Englishmen and the Revolution of 1688 71 (1988) (quoting a contemporary account) (spelling modernized).
1688. Novemb. 5. About the end of this year happen'd here in England the greatest revolution that was ever known. – W. A. Speck, Reluctant Revolutionaries: Englishmen and the Revolution of 1688 241 (1988) (quoting a contemporary account).
[A] great king with strong armies and mighty fleets, a vast treasure and powerful allies, fell all at once: and his whole strength, like a spider's web, was so irrecoverably broken with a touch, that he was never able to retrieve what for want both of judgment and heart he threw up in a day. – W. A. Speck, Reluctant Revolutionaries: Englishmen and the Revolution of 1688 138 (1988) (quoting Gilbert Burnet).
Seldom do we find a precedent of any Prince that labored against all common rule of policy, so industriously to lose a Crown as James II. – W. A. Speck, Reluctant Revolutionaries: Englishmen and the Revolution of 1688 117 (1988) (quoting a contemporary account).
From this let me conclude, call it Prophetick or what you please, the time is coming when you shall have more occasion to remember and value the Merit of King William, and the Blessings of the Revolution, than ever you had in your Lives. – Selected Poetry and Prose of Daniel Defoe 154 (Michael F. Shugrue ed. 1968) (quoting a newspaper article by Defoe published on November 8, 1712).
