"Sartre's thoughts on history and his writings about the past are very often provoking. They frequently challenge deep rooted assumptions, prevailing superficial ways of thinking, and accepted norms. (...) Sartre's insights often demand a rethinking of my relationship to specific events in the past, and a reassessment of my attitude to the field of history, be it defined as a story, a science, or a collective memory"

- Haim Gordon and Rivca Gordon, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

Source: Gordon, Haim and Riva Gordon. 1998. Sartre On Our Responsibility For Dead Lives: Implications For Teaching History. Paper for the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy, in Boston, Massachusetts August 10-15, 1998. The Paidea Archive. Available online from URL: http://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Hist/HistGord.htm [Downloaded 2010-05-26]

"Many, if not most, historians rarely read books by philosophers"

- Haim Gordon and Rivca Gordon, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

Source: Gordon, Haim and Riva Gordon. 1998. Sartre On Our Responsibility For Dead Lives: Implications For Teaching History. Paper for the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy, in Boston, Massachusetts August 10-15, 1998. The Paidea Archive. Available online from URL: http://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Hist/HistGord.htm [Downloaded 2010-05-26]

"History is not only a field in which you gather facts, events, and processes, but it is a worthy challenge which includes a grave personal responsibility: my responsibility to the dead lives"

- Haim Gordon and Rivca Gordon, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

Source: Gordon, Haim and Riva Gordon. 1998. Sartre On Our Responsibility For Dead Lives: Implications For Teaching History. Paper for the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy, in Boston, Massachusetts August 10-15, 1998. The Paidea Archive. Available online from URL: http://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Hist/HistGord.htm [Downloaded 2010-05-26]

"These costumes, which seem laughable to many thoughtless people - people who are grave without true gravity - have a double-natured charm, one both artistic and historical (...) And then, if they are worn and given life by intelligent actors and actresses, we shall be astonished at ever having been able to mock them so stupidly. Without losing anything of its ghostly attraction, the past will recover the light and movement of life and will become present"

- Charles Baudelaire

Source: Baudelaire, Charles. 1859. Originally printed in essay "Le Peintre de la Vie Moderne". Le Figaro, Paris, 26 & 28 November and 3 December 1863. Translation by Jonathan Mayne (ed). 1964. The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays. In Chapter: Beauty, Fashion and Happiness. London: Phaidon Press. p.2. Available online from http://www.columbia.edu/itc/architecture/ockman/pdfs/dossier_4/Baudelaire.pdf [Downloaded 2010-05-26].

"My concern today is with the painting of manners of the present. The past is interesting not only by reason of the beauty which could be distilled from it by those artists for whom it was the present, but also precisely because it is the past, for its historical value. It is the same with the present. The pleasure which we derive from the representation of the present is due not only to the beauty with which it can be invested, but also to its essential quality of being present"

- Charles Baudelaire

Source: Baudelaire, Charles. 1859. Originally printed in essay "Le Peintre de la Vie Moderne". Le Figaro, Paris, 26 & 28 November and 3 December 1863. Translation by Jonathan Mayne (ed). 1964. The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays. In Chapter: Beauty, Fashion and Happiness. London: Phaidon Press. p.1. Available online from http://www.columbia.edu/itc/architecture/ockman/pdfs/dossier_4/Baudelaire.pdf [Downloaded 2010-05-26].