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

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?

Quite apart from any conscious program, the great cultural historians have always been historical morphologists: seekers after theforms of life, thought, custom, knowledge, art.

Play is a uniquely adaptive act, not subordinate to some other adaptive act, but with a special function of its own in human experience.

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

Whether the aim is in heaven or on earth, wisdom or wealth, the essential condition of its pursuit and attainment is always security and order.

The title of hero is bestowed by the survivors upon the fallen, who themselves know nothing of heroism.