Only a fool would try to compress a hundred centuries into a hundred pages of hazardous conclusions. We proceed.
Ariel DurantThe present is the past rolled up for action, and the past is the present unrolled for understanding.
Ariel DurantThe influence of geographic factors diminishes as technology grows. The character and contour of a terrain may offer opportunities for agriculture, mining, or trade, but only the imagination and initiative of leaders, and the hardy industry of followers, can transform the possibilities into fact...Man, not the earth, makes civilization.
Ariel Durant