A Quote by George Santayana
Historical investigation has for its aim to fix the order and character of events throughout past time and in all places. The task is frankly superhuman.
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Our task is not to fix blame for the past, but to fix the course for the future.
We have gotten away from this double aspect of either putting the character back into historical events or of making a historical event of his very life.
Within a single scene, it seems to be unwise to have access to the inner reflections of more than one character. The reader generally needs a single character as the means of perception, as the character to whom the events are happening, as the character with whom he is to empathize in order to have the events of the writing happen to him.
We must stitch up what has been torn apart, render justice imaginable in the world which is so obviously unjust, make happiness meaningful for nations poisoned by the misery of this century. Naturally, it is a superhuman task. But tasks are called superhuman when men take a long time to complete them, that is all.
We are no longer dealing with historical events, but with places of collapse.
No, this customary aim of research by excavators is completely foreign to the historical work with which I am occupied... my sole and only aim is to be able to establish a historical fact, on which I disagree with some eminent historians and geographers.
The concepts "beyond" and "real world" were invented in order to depreciate the only world that exists-in order that no goal, no aim or task might be left for our earthly reality.
As a young prosecutor, I used the Bureau of Criminal Investigation extensively. I saw that there were problems with BCI. Frankly, I thought I could fix them. I thought if I was successful, I could really make a difference as attorney general.
We have hearing aids in order to fix our ears. We have lasik surgery in order to fix our eyes. People ... you can't fix stupid!
I don't separate my books into historical novels and the rest. To me, they're all made-up worlds, and both kinds are borne out of curiosity, some investigation into the past.
This is an important point about symbols: they do not refer to historical events; they refer through historical events to spiritual or psychological principles and powers that are of yesterday, today, and tomorrow, and that are everywhere.
A repetition is the re-enactment of past experience toward the end of isolating the time segment which has lapsed in order that it, the lapsed time, can be savored of itself and without the usual adulteration of events that clog time like peanuts in brittle.
I don't believe there's anything in life you can't go back and fix. The ancient Vedas - the oldest Hindu philosophy - and modern science agree that time is an illusion. If that's true, there's no such thing as a past or a future - it's all one huge now. So what you fix now affects the past and the future.
Problems come and go over time, and to understand why is a difficult historical task. If one wanted to find the origin of a problem, historical research and close attention to texts is what is needed, not unconstrained speculation about the 'pictures' that philosophers must be in the grip of.
History is opaque. You see what comes out, not the script that produces events, [...] The generator of historical events is different from the events themselves, much as the minds of the gods cannot be read just by witnessing their deeds.
. . . the mind is desperate to fix the river {of events} in place: Possessed by ideas of the past, preoccupied with images of the future, it overlooks the plain truth of the moment.
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