William H. McNeill

"The decline of Indian Buddhism was centrally due to the fact that it never offered the Indian laity a complete religion. Early Buddhism knew no ceremonies for birth and death, marriage, illness, and o…"

"The rise of Islam offers perhaps the most impressive example in world history of the power of words to alter human behavior in sudden, surprising ways."

"Birth control may in time catch up with death control. ...But for the present and the short-range future, it remains obvious that humanity is in course of one of the most massive and extraordinary eco…"

"Before the eighteenth century the demographic impact of the profession of medicine remained negligible. Relatively few persons could afford to pay a doctor for his often very expensive services; and f…"

"Ssu-ma Ch'ien's many-volumed history of China established the frame within which Chinese history continued to be written almost to the present day. Ssu-ma Ch'ien accepted and made canonical the theory…"

"Christian theology was a revised version of Greek philosophy and the effort Plato and his heirs made to discern the permanent behind the sensible, the Ideal and the Real behind the world of individual…"

"I came away from the two science surveys superficially acquainted with what was already a rather old-fashioned version of contemporary natural science. Relativity and quantum mechanics were mentioned.…"

"Painting responded to the plague-darkened vision of the human condition provoked by repeated exposure to sudden, inexplicable death. Tuscan painters reacted against Giotto's serenity, preferring stern…"