The present is always trying to speak through the past, to f... - Quentin Skinner

"The present is always trying to speak through the past, to find ancestors for its own preoccupations. We must resist this ventriloquism."

Quentin Skinner History

Historian Philosopher British Born 1940 (age 86)

More from Quentin Skinner

"The past is not dead; it is not even past."

"Ideas have consequences, and the historian's task is to trace them."

"We must understand the languages in which the past speaks to us."

"The study of history is the study of human possibility."

"I've seen a lot of things in my time."

"That's how we archaeologists tell time."

"We must learn from history or be doomed to repeat it."

"Every artifact tells a story."