If history can do anything it is to remind us that all our judgments are merely relative to time and circumstance.

About the scientific revolution: it "outshines everything since the rise of Christianity and reduces the Renaissance and Reformation to the rank of mere episodes".

The study of the past with one eye upon the present is the source of all sins and sophistries in history. It is the essence of what we mean by the word "unhistorical."

It is not a sin to introduce a personal bias that can be recognized and discounted. The sin in historical composition is the organization of the story in such a way that bias cannot be recognized.

The task of the historian is to understand the peoples of the past better than they understand themselves.

Those people work more wisely who seek to achieve good in their own small corner of the world ... than those who are forever thinking that life is in vain, unless one can. do big things.

Perhaps history is a thing that would stop happening if God held His breath, or could be imagined as turning away to think of something else.

[History is] the very servant of the servants of God, the drudge of all the drudges.

In the last resort, sheer insight is the greatest asset of all.

The raconteur knows too well that, if he investigates the truth of the matter, he is only too likely to lose his good story.

Those people work more wisely who seek to achieve good in their own small corner of the world ... than those who are forever thinking that life is in vain unless one can ... do big things.

The worldly life means a puzzle of ‘wrong beliefs’.

For prayer is request. The essence of request, as distinct from compulsion, is that it may or may not be granted.

Rest your eyes and then read till they fall out of your head.

I was eight years old and scared, and had no idea what was going on

Look, man, we'd probably most of us agree that these are dark times, and stupid ones, but do we need fiction that does nothing but dramatize how dark and stupid everything is?

The power of perpetuating our property in our families is one of the most valuable and interesting circumstances belonging to it, and that which tends the most to the perpetuation of society itself.

Men and women have roles - their roles are different, but their rights are equal.

Most of the Palestinians don't understand what they're doing... Politically, people can say what they want. The problem is not political, but religious.

Too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart. O when may it suffice?

I firmly believe today that the only way to stop violence against women is to speak out and refused to be silenced.