"The biggest mischief in the past century has been perpetrated by Rousseau with his doctrine of the goodness of human nature. The mob and the intellectuals derived from it the vision of a Golden Age which would arrive without fail once the noble human race could act according to its whims."

-- Jacob Burckhardt

#Past Quotes #Race Quotes #Vision Quotes

“I was mortified by the prospect of becoming hopelessly trapped in someone else's story.”
“The people were simpler, more peaceable and friendly in their manners and dispositions; and assassinations, which give the southern provinces so ill a reputation, were almost unknown.”

Source : Henry Walter Bates (1864). “The Naturalist on the River Amazons: A Record of Adventures, Habits of Animals, Sketches of Brazilian and Indian Life, and Aspects of Nature Under the Equator, During Eleven Years of Travel”, p.23
“This was one of those special occasions when I could actually feel the inner appreciation of the beauty of the moment passing like an electric current through the brush in my hand.”
“You can't argue with a raging want. You can, but it is useless.”
“We must remember to teach our children that even if others fail to be kind and considerate, we ought to be slow to condemn and very quick to forgive. We need not be tolerant of sin, but we must become tolerant and forgiving of the sinner.”
“In the state of nature... all men are born equal, but they cannot continue in this equality. Society makes them lose it, and they recover it only by the protection of the law.”

Source : Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu (2015). “The Spirit of Laws”, p.156, Library of Alexandria
“We are dealing with the best-educated generation in history. But they've got a brain dressed up with nowhere to go.”

Source : "Rolling Stone" Twentieth Anniversary Issue, 1987.
“I have no ego. There is no way you can have a big ego and survive in this [show]business. You can't learn if you think no one else has anything to say that's of value.”

You may also like:

Constantine the Great
Roman emperor
Friedrich Nietzsche
Philologist
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola
Philosopher
Johan Huizinga
Historian
Johann Joachim Winckelmann
Art Historian
Jules Michelet
Historian
Leopold von Ranke
Historian
Peter Burke
Historian
Petrarch
Poet