The fact of progress is written plain and large on the page of history; but progress is not a law of nature.
History is one damn thing after another.
Purity of race does not exist. Europe is a continent of energetic mongrels.
I can see only one safe rule for the historian: that he should recognize in the development of human destinies the play of the contingent and the unforeseen.
It is a terrible commentary on Christian civilization that the longest period of slave-raiding known to history was initiated by the action of Spain, Portugal, France, Holland and Britain, after the Christian faith had for more than a thousand years been the established religion of Europe.
Nothing commends a radical change to an Englishman more than the belief that it is really conservative.
