For Rousseau and Mandeville the absence of a moral instinct meant the laws of society had no moral validity, they were nothing but the inventions of the cunning and the powerful, in order to maintain or to acquire an unnatural and unjust superiority over the rest of their fellow creatures.
Gertrude HimmelfarbThe footnote would seem to be the smallest detail in a work of history. Yet it carries a large burden of responsibility, testifying to the validity of the work, the integrity (and the humility) of the historian, and to the dignity of the discipline.
Gertrude HimmelfarbThe real movement of history, it turns out, is fueled not by matter but by spirit, by the will to freedom.
Gertrude Himmelfarb