Nothing commends a radical change to an Englishman more than the belief that it is really conservative.

History is one damn thing after another.

The fact of progress is written plain and large on the page of history; but progress is not a law of nature.

I can see only one safe rule for the historian: that he should recognize in the development of human destinies the play of the contingent and the unforeseen.

It is a terrible commentary on Christian civilization that the longest period of slave-raiding known to history was initiated by the action of Spain, Portugal, France, Holland and Britain, after the Christian faith had for more than a thousand years been the established religion of Europe.

Purity of race does not exist. Europe is a continent of energetic mongrels.

Nothing commends a radical change to an Englishman more than the belief that it is really conservative.