“To understand what was in Ivan’s mind, one has to think back to what the world was like before Machiavelli. The modern calculus of profit and loss probably meant nothing to Ivan. He never thought about realpolitik. His concerns were… — Felipe Fernández-Armesto Copy Share Image
“His addiction to millenarianism, his confidence in visions, his prophetic stridency, his hatred of art, and his mistrust of secular scholarship align him with… — Felipe Fernández-Armesto Copy Share Image
“When the United States wants cheap labor, Mexicans respond. When the employment market north of the border is glutted, the barbed wire gets taut,… — Felipe Fernández-Armesto Copy Share Image
“Unless US citizens acknowledge and understand their country's imperial past, they will not be able to understand its present or future. Much of the… — Felipe Fernández-Armesto Copy Share Image
“to become a great saint, it is no bad first step to be a big sinner.” — Felipe Fernández-Armesto Copy Share Image
“Chinese naval activity, for instance, was aborted after Zheng He’s last voyage, probably as a result of” — Felipe Fernández-Armesto Copy Share Image
“Their ships were steeds, and they rode the waves like jennets.” — Felipe Fernández-Armesto Copy Share Image
“Capitalism seems to have failed and is now stigmatized as greed. A reaction against individual excess is driving the world back to collective values. Fear of terror overrides rights; fear of slumps subverts free markets. Consumption levels and urbanization are simply unsustainable at recent rates in the face of environmental change. The throwaway society is headed for the trash heap.… — Felipe Fernández-Armesto Copy Share
“Only three routes of upward mobility were available to socially ambitious upstarts such as Columbus: war, the Church, and the sea. Columbus probably contemplated… — Felipe Fernández-Armesto Copy Share Image
“in their supposed innocence of and opposition to empire, have become the mythic progenitors of the United States—almost as improbably as Solomon was of… — Felipe Fernández-Armesto Copy Share Image
“Like poor immigrants throughout the ages, Jews there adjusted to the jobs no one else would do.” — Felipe Fernández-Armesto Copy Share Image
As populations crowd toward the ocean's edge and the sea encroaches menacingly toward the land, John R. Gillis looks at the history of the… — Felipe Fernandez-Armesto Copy Share Image
“All definitions of civilization along to a conjugation which goes: "I am civilized, you belong to a culture, he is a barbarian.” — Felipe Fernández-Armesto Copy Share Image
