HISTORY

Cicero (106-43 BC), one of the most versatile minds of Roman culture, said:

"To be ignorant of what happened before you were born is to be ever a child. For what is the value of human life unless it is interwoven with past events by the records of history?"

Another quote--from the book Doubleday Pictorial Library of World History--given to me by my daughters for Christmas many years ago--

"Sometimes a severe shock or an injury to the brain can make a man lose his memory. When that happens to anyone, he loses not only his memory but his sense of identity. He no longer remembers who he is, what he is called, where he lives, where he came from or where he is going. HISTORY is the collective memory of the human race; and without the knowledge of the past that history provides, mankind would be in the same predicament as the individual who loses his memory: it would lose its sense of identity. History, like memory, is an essential part of ourselves and of our knowledge of who we are."