"Wisely used history can give pleasure and provide us with a useful tool; but we should not become its slaves"
About this Quote
History, in Douglas Hurd's formulation, is either a civilizing hobby or a dangerous drug. The line turns on a deliberately practical contrast: history as "pleasure" and "tool" versus history as "master". Coming from a British Conservative politician shaped by late-imperial hangovers and postwar recalibration, it reads like a warning against the two temptations that stalk public life: nostalgia marketed as policy, and grievance curated as identity.
"Pleasure" is doing quiet work here. Hurd isn’t flattering the past as moral scripture; he’s insisting it can be enjoyed without being worshipped. That disarms the purists who treat history as a tribunal, forever re-litigating old verdicts. Then comes "useful tool", a phrase that drags the discipline out of the seminar room and into cabinet-level decision-making: precedents, analogies, institutional memory. Statesmen, especially in a country obsessed with its own continuity, lean on history to justify what they already want to do. Hurd concedes the need for that scaffolding while warning about its collapse.
The subtext is about misrecognition: mistaking analogy for inevitability. When leaders read every rival as Hitler, every diplomatic thaw as Munich, every union as Rome, they stop thinking and start reenacting. "Slaves" names the loss of agency - not ignorance of the past, but captivity to it. The intent is not amnesia; it’s sovereignty of judgment. Use history, don’t let it use you.
"Pleasure" is doing quiet work here. Hurd isn’t flattering the past as moral scripture; he’s insisting it can be enjoyed without being worshipped. That disarms the purists who treat history as a tribunal, forever re-litigating old verdicts. Then comes "useful tool", a phrase that drags the discipline out of the seminar room and into cabinet-level decision-making: precedents, analogies, institutional memory. Statesmen, especially in a country obsessed with its own continuity, lean on history to justify what they already want to do. Hurd concedes the need for that scaffolding while warning about its collapse.
The subtext is about misrecognition: mistaking analogy for inevitability. When leaders read every rival as Hitler, every diplomatic thaw as Munich, every union as Rome, they stop thinking and start reenacting. "Slaves" names the loss of agency - not ignorance of the past, but captivity to it. The intent is not amnesia; it’s sovereignty of judgment. Use history, don’t let it use you.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
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