“History (white terror in Taiwan) cannot be forgotten. There is no history that cannot be declassified, no truth that cannot be revealed.”

“We cannot change the history of the past.”

Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)

“Historians may lie, but History cannot.”

George Saintsbury (1845–1933) British literary critic

“Those who indulge in history cannot create new history. You cannot legislate national integration unless political work is done constructively and there is a lifestyle for life.”

Baba Amte (1914–2008) Indian freedom fighter, social worker

“History is not the arena in which natural scientists look for the truth; quite the contrary, they believe it cannot be found there but rather in the laboratory. From their point of view history will at best yield up stale truths that have been superseded.”

Kurt Danziger (1926) German academic

“Truth cannot be constructed. To live in ideology is, as Havel so eloquently reminds us, inevitably to live in a lie. Truth can only be revealed. We cannot be creators, only receptors.”

James W. Sire (1933–2018) American writer

“One reason we cannot forget our law enforcement legacy is that the people we serve and protect cannot forget it, either. So we must talk about our history. It is a hard truth that lives on.”

James Comey (1960) American lawyer and the seventh director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)

“Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

George Santayana (1863–1952) 20th-century Spanish-American philosopher associated with Pragmatism

“A people's memory is history; and as a man without a memory, so a people without a history cannot grow wiser, better.”

Isaac Leib Peretz (1852–1915) Yiddish language author and playwright

“History cannot be erased or altered. Because that would mean killing yourself.”

Haruki Murakami (1949) Japanese author, novelist