The great lesson of history is that it exists.
Jun 042014
Remembering
The obscurest epoch is today.
—Stevenson
Jun 032014
History is made forwards and written backwards, which is the chief source of error in both the making and the writing.
Apr 102014
Humanity has progressed vastly with how, less with what, and not at all with why.
Mar 252014
Chronology is to history what arithmetic is to mathematics.
Mar 062014
Countries are artificial: cities are natural.
Mar 042014
Today’s reductio, tomorrow’s reality.
Feb 122014
From mass literacy the last couple of centuries follow more or less ineluctably.
Jan 282014
Today we hear silence as our ancestors heard music.
Jan 062014
“It was a culture,” the historian will write a century from now, “that found it necessary to invent the word ‘unironically.'”
Jan 032014
That no change is possible was the ancient superstition; that any change is possible is the modern one.