Utopianism is probably a necessary social device for generating the superhuman efforts without which no major revolution is achieved.

The only certain thing about the future is that it will surprise even those who have seen furthest into it.

Utopianism is probably a necessary social device for generating the superhuman efforts without which no major revolution is achieved.

The most lasting and universal consequence of the French revolution is the metric system

Nations without a past are contradictions in terms. What makes a nation is the past, what justifies one nation against others is the past, and historians are the people who produce it.

Historians are to nationalism what poppy-growers in Pakistan are to heroin-addicts: we supply the essential raw material for the market.

It is a melancholy illusion of those who write books and articles that the printed word survives. Alas, it rarely does.