The history of the world is the record of a man in quest of his daily bread and butter.

The Pilgrims made seven times more graves than huts. No Americans have been more impoverished than these who nevertheless set aside a day of thanksgiving.

Ought we not to look upon our own history as being at least as full of God, as full of His goodness and of His truth, as much a proof of His faithfulness and veracity, as the lives of any of the...

The first value of money was clearly the value which the goods used as money possessed {thanks to their suitability for satisfying human wants in other ways} at the moment when they were first used as...

A day came when I should have died, and after that nothing seemed very important, so I stayed as I am, without regret separated from the normal human condition.

History is the archaeology of the present and future.

The entire Nazi war machine was only possible because of past, present and future violations of the non aggression principle {achievable only through government}.

Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst...

If you don't know history, you don't know anything. Edward Johnston

The dead are the past and we cannot escape the past. Without the past there will be no future.

The present is the key to the past.

The easy assumption that we have remembered the most important people and events and have preserved the most valuable evidence is immediately trumped by our inability to know what we have forgotten.

Alcohol's been keeping depression alive and well for over ten thousand years.

History tells Us It's Possible.

Cops and Robbers in 1965 England was still a kind of Ealing comedy: crimes rarely involved firearms. The denizens of F - wing were losers in a game they had been playing against the cops. In queues...

By the late fifth century, the identities of those excluded from full personhood - women, slaves, barbarians - are being increasingly understood in terms of the difficulty or impossibility of...

The historian's task is not to disrupt for the sake of it, but it is to tell what is almost always an uncomfortable story and explain why the discomfort is part of the truth we need to live well and...

I run my finger along the crease of the envelope, feel the weight of history inside. Wherever I'm going next, these are coming with me.

I hope… that we are making China more interesting and less exotic to our Europeanist colleagues. Soon it may no longer suffice for historians of Europe to make mere polite bows in the direction of...

What is truly arresting about our kind is better captured in the story of the Tower of Babel, in which humanity, speaking a single language, came so close to reaching heaven that God himself felt...

Knowledge that does not change behaviour is useless. But knowledge that changes behaviour quickly loses its relevance.

When history disappears, you disappear.

We can learn from history, but we can also deceive ourselves when we selectively take evidence from the past to justify what we have already made up our minds to do.

Whether I like it or not, most of my images of what various historical periods feel, smell, or sound like were acquired well before I set foot in any history class. They came from Margaret Mitchell,...

Let us study things that are no more. It is necessary to understand them, if only to avoid them.

History is a set of lies agreed upon.

Slavery ended in medieval Europe only because the church extended its sacraments to all slaves and then managed to impose a ban on the enslavement of Christians {and of Jews}. Within the context of...

Bread and Circuses

Mr. Watson - Come here - I want to see you.

Being doped is a pleasure you pay for. There was always opium there for the people — in the end it tainted their whole faith. If the Church had not always stood so watchfully behind the ruling...