❮ Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy Live!

Volume 13: History Must Be Told (1955)

One 1-hour lecture.

Future and past are in equilibrium. That’s a very mysterious human law. But it’s as safe to call it a law as the law of gravity. The future is not the product from the past or the present. But it is that amount of faith which allows us to select from the past those events which still guarantee us our future.

—May 4, 1955

History is the story of people facing challenges, people who deserve to be remembered because they either changed conditions or met new conditions the right way. And as history is the story of things that at one time appeared to be impossible, their stories have to be told, so that people will develop the courage to stand up for entirely new solutions, even though the chances for success cannot be proven on the basis of experience. History is also the story of those events, started and not yet finished, which if remembered and continued, may help solve the problems of the present. The memory of history can become a promise.