The Islamic conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history. It is a discouraging tale, for its evident moral is that civilization is a precious good, whose delicate complex of order and freedom, culture and peace, can at any moment be overthrown by barbarians invading from without or multiplying within.

The past is not dead. Indeed, it is often not even past.

To rulers religion, like almost everything else, is a tool of power.

Rome remained great as long as she had enemies who forced her to unity, vision, and heroism. When she had overcome them all she flourished for a moment and then began to die.

Truth will not make us rich, but it will make us free.

Those who have suffered much become very bitter or very gentle.

From barbarism to civilization requires a century; from civilization to barbarism needs but a day.