# Does It Help to Know History?

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## Metadata
- Author: [[Adam Gopnik]]
- Full Title: Does It Help to Know History?
- Category: #articles
- URL: http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/help-know-history

## Highlights
- But the best argument for reading history is not that it will show us the right thing to do in one case or the other, but rather that it will show us why even doing the right thing rarely works out.
- What history generally “teaches” is how hard it is for anyone to control it, including the people who think they’re making it.
- What history actually shows is that nothing works out as planned, and that everything has unintentional consequences. History doesn’t show that we should never go to war—sometimes there’s no better alternative. But it does show that the results are entirely uncontrollable, and that we are far more likely to be made by history than to make it.