-Your mother is a judge. It's her job to put a line through the past by passing sentence. I'm a historian. For me the past is a gold mine of surprises and possibilities.
-A gold mine?…A dunghill is more like it.
-Dunghills have their surprises too.
President Ion Iliescu [of Romania] has just announced the formation of an international expert commission charged with studying the history of the Holocaust in Romania between 1937 and 1951.
Historians are not judges. A historical commission is not a court of law.