“God alone knows the future, but only an historian can alter the past.”
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Ambrose Bierce 204
American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabu… 1842–1914Related quotes

“Only by acceptance of the past, can you alter it”
Source: Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister

“Only by not forgetting the past can we be the master of the future.”
As quoted "Literary witness to century of turmoil" in China Daily (24 November 2003)

“As all historians know, the past is a great darkness, and filled with echoes.”
Historical Notes (p. 311)
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985)
Source: The Handmaid's Tale
Context: As all historians know, the past is a great darkness, and filled with echoes. Voices may reach us from it; but what they say to us is imbued with the obscurity of the matrix out of which they come; and, try as we may, we cannot always decipher them precisely in the clearer light of our own day.