I never got to be a full-time social studies teacher. But if I’d had, I would’ve used quotes to help put things in perspective. Here are some of my favorites —

“History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon.”  —  Napoleon Bonaparte

“History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.”  —  Winston Churchill

“History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives.”  —  Abba Eban

“History is more or less bunk.”  —  Henry Ford

“Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.”  —  H. G. Wells

And my all-time favorite, because it explains why we should study history in the first place:

“Fools say that they learn by experience. I prefer to profit by others experience.”  — Otto von Bismarck (Over the years, I’ve seen several versions of this.)