History, as the study of the past, makes the coherence of what happened comprehensible by reducing events to a dramatic pattern and seeming them in a simple form.

In Europe art has to a large degree taken the place of religion. In America it seems rather to be science.

The content of the ideal is a desire to return to the perfection of an imaginary past.

William James once said: "Progress is a terrible thing." It is more than that: it is also a highly ambiguous notion. For who knowsbut that a little further on the way a bridge may not have collapsed or a crevice split the earth?

We are living in a demented world. And we know it. It would not come as a surprise to anyone if tomorrow the madness gave way to afrenzy which would leave our poor Europe in a state of distracted stupor, with engines still turning and flags streaming in the breeze, but with the spirit gone.

The second fundamental feature of culture is that all culture has an element of striving.

No other discipline has its portals so wide open to the general public as history.