Great innovations appear made by many simultaneously, because we consign to obscurity anyone more than a week or two ahead of his time.
Feb 102017
Remembering
The obscurest epoch is today.
—Stevenson
Feb 082017
The medieval church had a juster claim as guardian of the life of the mind than the contemporary university.
Jan 052017
Historically killing deprived its victims only of life; the modern refinement is to deprive them first of agency.
Dec 142016
It is no harder to foresee the future than to construe the past.
Nov 282016
Each great upheaval of history that now seems to us inevitable came to nearly everyone who lived through it as a complete surprise.
Nov 242016
Aristocracies die with the disappearance of their duties, not their privileges.
Aug 102016
However many stages history is divided into, ours is always second to last.
Aug 012016
Civilizations expire, unnoticed, in a rabble of compilers, curators, connoisseurs, encyclopedists, mashers-up, aficionados.
Jun 282016
History, in one sense, is a succession of ever-widening protection rackets.
Jun 082016
It defeats the purpose of remembering someone’s name to look pleased with yourself for having done so.