"Historians of every generation, I believe, unless they are pure antiquarians, see history against the background - the controlling background - of current events. They call upon it to explain the problems of their own time, to give to those problems a philosophical context, a continuum in which they may be reduced to proportion and perhaps made intelligible."

The victory of liberalism enables them to sue their victors.

"Historians of every generation, I believe, unless they are pure antiquarians, see history against the background - the controlling background - of current events. They call upon it to explain the problems of their own time, to give to those problems a philosophical context, a continuum in which they may be reduced to proportion and perhaps made intelligible."

Summation of Leviathan: "The axiom, fear; the method, logic; the conclusion, despotism."

... the death of the spirit which threatens every man unless he is conscious of the danger and has a real purpose which can keep it alive and enable it to thrust its way through the choking weeds and thorns to the air and to the sun

The function of genius is not to give new answers, but to pose new questions which time and mediocrity can resolve.

History is not merely what happened. It is what happened in the context of what might have happened.