Medievalist

🇮🇹Umberto Eco

Literature

1932–2016

"Signs are not empirical objects. Empirical objects become signs only from the point of view of a philosophical decision."

🇬🇧Steven Runciman

Literature

1903–2000

"I believe that the supreme duty of the historian is to write history, that is to say, to attempt to record in one sweeping sequence the greater events and movements that have swayed the destinies of man."

"Strange as it may seem to hear it said, there were no Germanic peoples in late antiquity. The illusion that there were can be outgrown."

🇮🇱Yuval Noah Harari

Literature

b. 1976

"The most important secular commitment is to the truth, which is based on observation and evidence rather than on mere faith. Seculars strive not to confuse truth with belief."

Frederick York Powell

History

1850–1904

"It was a soufflé of a speech, light, pleasant, digestible, and nourishing also."

🇫🇷Marc Bloch

Education

Annales school

1886–1944

"There is no true understanding without a certain range of comparison."

"I twitch every time anyone mentions ‘Germanic’ culture."