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?

Every work of history constructs contexts and designs, forms in which past reality can be comprehended. History creates comprehensibility primarily by arranging facts meaningfully and only in a very limited sense by establishing strict causal connections.

A crude mind could easily think: something is valid, therefore it is true.

The repudiation of the primacy of understanding means the repudiation of the norms of judgment as well, and hence the abandonment of all ethical standards.

We have to transpose ourselves into this impressionability of mind, into this sensitivity to tears and spiritual repentance, intothis susceptibility, before we can judge how colorful and intensive life was then.

History is the interpretation of the significance that the past has for us.

A superstition which pretends to be scientific creates a much greater confusion of thought than one which contents itself with simple popular practices.