It doesn’t matter which side of history you’re on, as long as you’re not in its way.
Dec 112023
Remembering
The obscurest epoch is today.
—Stevenson
Nov 092023
We infer the future from the past because the past is all we have: our generalizations, like our generals, are always fighting the last war.
Oct 122023
Men who knew something about everything were deposed by men who knew everything about something, who were succeeded, in their turn, by men who know nothing about anything.
Sep 112023
Wounded honor provoked duels; wounded feelings provoke lawsuits.
Sep 072023
We repeat history because we cannot reverse it.
Jun 232023
This is not the end of history. It is not even the beginning of the end of history. But it is, perhaps, the end of the end of history.
Jun 132023
Nearly everything in history nearly didn’t happen.
Jun 082023
The history of Western art would be entirely different if, 500 years ago, we had known that the Greeks painted their sculpture.
May 122023
For every empire history offers a hundred reasons why it fell, when what we need to know is why it lasted.
Mar 072023
The East, the West, the classical and Christian, the medieval and modern, the peasantry, the proletariat, the bourgeoisie, the 18th, 19th, 20th century — what intellectual malfeasance shelters under the definite article!