Since God is silent, man is his own master; he must live in a disenchanted world, submit everything to criticism, and make his own way.

With the passage of years, not all of Dicken's readers remained infatuated with his pathos. One generation's sublimity became another generation's kitsch.

The ideas of theologians are refuted by their adversaries, the ideas of scientists are refuted by their followers.

And my interest in history was, and remains, very strong: what I wanted was to understand certain things better by understanding them psychoanalytically.

What interests me, and has always interested me, has been modernism.

Every historian has informally an anthropology, without ever using the word.

To have a liberal temperament is a kind of psychological boon, To be able to understand that someone you disagree with is not just a terrible creature but somebody with whom you disagree.