History

🇬🇧Francis Bacon

Literature

empiricism

1909–1992

"This is certain, that a man that studieth revenge, keeps his own wounds green, which otherwise would heal, and do well."

🇺🇸Henry David Thoreau

Literature

Western philosophy

1817–1862

"I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.."

🇿🇦David Hume

Philosophy

Empiricism

1796–1864

"The conclusion [of the essay 'Of the Protestant Succession'] shows me a Whig, but a very sceptical one."

🇩🇪Friedrich Schiller

Literature

Sturm und Drang

1895–1990

"What one refuses in a minuteNo eternity will return."

Thomas Hobbes

Philosophy

empiricism

1588–1679

"The source of every Crime, is some defect of the Understanding; or some error in Reasoning; or some sudden force of the Passions."

🇫🇷Michel Foucault

Literature

atheism

1926–1984

"Today, criminal justice functions and justifies itself only by this perpetual reference to something other than itself, by this unceasing reinscription in non-juridical systems."

Max Weber

Science

1836–1897

"Politics means a strong slow drilling of hard boards, with passion and judgment at the same time."

🇬🇷Plutarch

Philosophy

"Pyrrhus said, "If I should overcome the Romans in another fight, I were undone."

🇺🇸Richard Pipes

Literature

1923–2018

"Both Hitler and Mussolini regarded themselves as revolutionaries, and rightly so. Rauschning claimed that National Socialism was actually more revolutionary in its goals than either Communism or anarchism."

🇺🇸Carroll Quigley

Education

1910–1977

"...human beings have religious needs. They have a need for a feeling of certitude in their minds about things they cannot control and they do not fully understand, and with humility, they admit they do not understand..."

Herodotus

History

-483–-424

"Haste in every business brings failures."

🇬🇧Paul Johnson

Literature

1928–2023

"This book is dedicated to the people of America--strong, outspoken, intense in their convictions, sometimes wrong-headed but always generous and brave, with a passion for justice no nation has ever matched."

🇬🇧Niall Ferguson

Economics

neoliberalism

b. 1964

"Without the spread of British rule around the world, it is hard to believe that the structures of liberal capitalism would have been so successfully established in so many different economies around the world."

🇺🇸William H. Prescott

Literature

1796–1859

"The history of literature is the history of the human mind. It is, as compared with other histories, the intellectual as distinguished from the material, the informing spirit as compared with the outward and visible."

🇸🇪Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden

Politics

b. 1946

"For me it is important to live in harmony with developments in Sweden and all over the changing world around us that we are actually part of."

🇺🇸Bill O'Reilly (political commentator)

Journalism

b. 1949

"Because I think she's run by far-left elements in this country. I feel bad for the woman."

🇬🇧J. B. Bury

Education

1861–1927

"The Macedonian people and their kings were of Greek stock, as their traditions and the scanty remains of their language combine to testify."

"Certainly, in time, after being told repeatedly that they were in fact Goths... was no question in anyone’s mind that they were indeed Goths."

🇬🇧Lucy Worsley

History

b. 1973

"My main job as a curator is to try to get people interested in history, to visit our palaces, to enjoy themselves, and to learn something, too. I try to do the same with my books, to entertain as well as to inform."

🇬🇧Timothy Garton Ash

Education

b. 1955

"Putin must be stopped. And sometimes only guns can stop guns."

🇨🇦Michel Brunet

History

1917–1985

"The thing which amazes me is that I now perfectly well, as a historian, that there is corruption in any government - there's always corruption. It's bad when it's more than fifteen percent."

Ibn Khaldun

Economics

1332–1406

"All the sciences came to exist in Arabic. The systematic works on them were written in Arabic writing."

Andrew Lang

Literature

1844–1912

"Custom and Myth - full text HTML of original work."

"The right hand of the empire, Mahmud Sultan, son of Nasir-ud-Din Subuk-Tigin, Breaker of Idols."

"African continent GMs do exist; but, according to the system of racial classification, I am the first Black GM in history...it matters, and doesn't matter, all at the same time."

William Edward Hartpole Lecky

Politics

1838–1903

"The great art in politics consists not in hearing those who speak, but in hearing those who are silent."

"The most important shift, especially in South Asia, has been the rise to prominence of scholarship that returns not to Hegel but to Marx."

🇺🇸Alan Charles Kors

Education

b. 1943

"There are in the final analysis, two kinds of decisions. One, decisions you make for yourself and two decisions other people make for you, whether it's one tyrant or 51% of your fellow citizens."

"For me, the historian's principal task should be to raise the dead to life."

🇺🇸Anne Applebaum

Literature

b. 1964

"2005 Pulitzer Prize citation for Gulag: A History"