Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.

Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.

May you look back on the past with as much pleasure as you look forward to the future.

May you look back on the past with as much pleasure as you look forward to the future.

Everyone is necessarily the hero of his own life story.

Everyone is necessarily the hero of his own life story.

Historians are like deaf people who go on answering questions that no one has asked them.

Historians are like deaf people who go on answering questions that no one has asked them.

There is properly no history, only biography.

There is properly no history, only biography.

Had Cleopatra's nose been shorter, the whole face of the world would have been different.

Had Cleopatra's nose been shorter, the whole face of the world would have been different.

History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies.

History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies.

One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever read more

One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say.

A man can be a hero if he is a scientist, or a soldier, or a drug addict, or a read more

A man can be a hero if he is a scientist, or a soldier, or a drug addict, or a disc jockey, or a crummy mediocre politician. A man can be a hero because he suffers and despairs; or because he thinks logically and analytically; or because he is "sensitive;" or because he is cruel. Wealth establishes a man as a hero, and so does poverty. Virtually any circumstance in a man's life will make him a hero to some group of people and has a mythic rendering in the culture -- in literature, art, theater, or the daily newspapers.