Quote by Emil Staiger

“Let us be prepared to set aside the habits of our own day and to honour the past as a treasure of neglected and forgotten, but still living, possibilities. There is no other way to escape the indignity of the despotism inflicted by our provinciality in time, no other way to regain the freedom only history can afford. We had let ourselves be convinced that history is useless. Much too late it began to dawn on us how narrowly this confines our horizons, how our growth is stunted when we seek nothing in history but contradiction or reinforcement, instead of frolicking carelessly and selflessly in its meadows, led only by curiosity.”

Quote by Emil Staiger